T-Mobile gets in Telus' face over use of "My Faves"
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Dec 15th 2007 2:47PM
posted Dec 15th 2007 2:47PM
T-Mobile launched its myFaves service back in October of 2006, a service that's proven popular with customers -- and apparently, it's gaining popularity with other carriers 'round the world, too. In Canada, Telus unveiled a program whereby five numbers of your choosing get unlimited calling and texting in May of this year; sounds familiar, right? Yeah, it is -- same deal as myFaves, actually -- and that probably wouldn't have riled up T-Mobile. The Deutsche Telekom division doesn't deal much with Canada, after all, and a little international copycatting never hurt anyone, right? Indeed, we figure Telus probably would've gotten away with the promotion had they not decided to call it... wait for it... "My Faves." Now yes, we understand that the "M" is capitalized and they've used two words instead of melding them into one, but come on. Needless to say, T-Mob is less than pleased with the branding and has filed a trademark infringement suit in federal court up in the Great White North with the intention of getting Telus to go with something a little less familiar (say, "Fy Maves," for example). For what it's worth, Telus jumped on the Canadian trademark for its service a month before T-Mobile did, but we're pretty sure the whole prior art concept might apply here.
Prior art is a patent thing, not a trademark thing. If you apply for a trademark for a product/service in a particular region before someone else does, and it's in your name, you get to use it. They don't. T-Mobile didn't apply for the trademark in Canada, so Telus wins. I would guess that Telus could actually file a countersuit against T-Mobile for the arrogant thinking that it can boss around someone over the use of their own trademark.
T-Mobile should just buy Telus... and then kill the rest of the competition up here by creating an affordable unlimited data
Telus does have 2 unlimited data plans, but theyre either $75 or $100 a month, with the only difference being whether or not you get unlimited data while in the US
Telus does have a new $15 unlimited email, im, and browsing (non-tethered only) on three handsets: the Touch, the Pearl and the HTC5800. This is a preemptive strike against the upcoming iPhone
T Mobile what a laugh they followed Alltells's 10 numbers free. Alltell beats them hands down in every way.
you're stupid for many reasons.
*laughs because of how poor your spelling/grammar is*
Alltel sucks.
And Cingular/AT&T actually designed and developed the "call 10 people for free" service back when they purchased Pac Bell Wireless. Pac Bell had a service on their mainframe-based billing system where you could call like 3 people for free under the same idea as the TMobile My Faves or Alltel Circle, so when the customers were converted to the Cingular Billing system, Telegence, which is owned by a CSM development company called Amdocs, they developed the service for Telegence, and made it variable, where you could have as many as 20 people in your free calling list.
Now, TMobile and AllTel using billing systems designed by Amdocs, and the free calling list has become part of the core code of the system. So they both used the system, pairing down to 10 and 5 respectively, whereas Cingular didn't want to because they were developing rollover minutes.
Billing development among the cell cariers is a very incestious process.
I was waiting for T-Mobile to launch some kind of lawsuit against Telus for this. It's a pretty blatant rip, even if they are in two different (but neighboring) countries. And Canadians see plenty U.S. ads.
I remember when Telus introduced the plan, a few days after Rogers' My5 plan came out, I thought "Yeah.. Telus is going to get sued!"
I'm going to add My5 Canada Wide ($15/mo) when I'm out in Quebec next year.. that's if my 1000 minutes of Canadian long distance can't cover it.
You go Tmobile! Show them who's boss!