Last fall Motorola brought back the RAZR from the dead, and it's been pretty successful so far. Now it's possible Motorola is planning on doing the same with the StarTAC. The StarTAC was very successful even before the original RAZR existed, and it revolutionized the clamshell design in the late 90's. It appears that last week, on July 9th, Motorola filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seeking a trademark for the name “Star Tac” for mobile phones, smartphones, cordless phones and accessories therefor, namely battery chargers and power adaptors. Interestingly enough this trademark has a space between Star and Tac, whereas the original trademark was simply StarTAC.
Motorola applied for the original trademark (without the space) in 1995 and it was registered in 1997, but in July of 2004 it was cancelled and listed as Dead. To further complicate things, Motorola filed for the same trademark in April 2004 (3 months before the cancellation of the first trademark) only to abandon the process in April of 2008. Now a completely different company called Data Access in France tried to file for the same trademark in 2009 for cell phones and other computer equipment, but it was never registered, and they subsequently abandoned the process nearly 4 years later this past May. I don't pretend to be a trademark expert, but obviously something is going on with the name StarTAC so they are now seeking a trademark for this new version with the space between Star and Tac.
Something else that is interesting is Google CEO Larry Page's quote from back in March when the Google acquisition was finalized. He said:
I’m excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone. We all remember Motorola's StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google.
Of course just mentioning the StarTAC doesn't necessarily mean anything, but how about this quote from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who said the following last September about the purchase of Motorola Mobility:
“We did it for more than just patents. We actually believe that the Motorola team has some amazing products coming,” and went on to add that, “We’re excited to have the product line, to use the Motorola brand, the product architecture, the engineers. These guys invented the RAZR. We know them well because they’re Google Apps users.”
We all know what happened one month later, when Motorola announced the resurrection of the RAZR under the DROID umbrella.
Obviously we have no idea what Motorola has in store for the Star Tac trademark. Could they introduce a clamshell Android phone? Maybe they plan on using this brand for their upcoming Intel-based phones. Time will tell, but what do you guys think? Will you welcome back the StarTAC or shall I say Star Tac?
sources: uspto 7/9/12 – uspto 9/7/95 – uspto 4/13/04 – uspto 3/11/09
