Last year, MetroPCS kicked off the
respectably ballsy practice of inviting competitors' subscribers to bring their CDMA phones over to get flashed for use on its network, prompting Virgin -- a carrier that plays in the same value space as MetroPCS -- to take issue. Long story short, Virgin ended up filing a lawsuit against MetroPCS citing a couple claims: one, that MetroPCS is willfully interfering with Virgin's customer contracts, and two, that the flashing ultimately results in a trademark violation since Virgin's logo is still on the phone. Funny how law works, isn't it? Anyhow, a court's thrown out the contract claim but is allowing the trademark issue to proceed, making this an interesting one to watch. In the meantime, anyone looking at bailing to MetroPCS and planning on taking some hardware along for the ride might want to look into that sooner rather than later -- you never know what sorts of injunctions might come out of this.
[Via
Phone Scoop]
posted Sep 30th 2009 7:19PM
I don't know about Virgin support, but our tier 1 and 2 at Metro PCS sucks. Once you flash the device to Metro PCS data is rendered unusable, it's only good for voice. No ifs, ands, or buts, and no BS story a store or kiosk rep tells you will change that.
MetroPCS isn't selling the Virgin-branded devices themselves, so the trademark violation is moot, too. MetroPCS had better be careful with its marketing material, though.
Wouldn't it be easy enough for MetroPCS to circumvent this by placing little MetroPCS-branded stickers over the Virgin Mobile logos?
Um, wha? Like we don't have tons of GSM phones with old logos on them bouncing about... like, oh, I don't know, a T-Mobile unlocked phone currently with a Vodafone SIM in it. (cough)
A customer using network A on a phone with network B's logo on it is a trademark violation on network A's part... If this ridiculous theory were to get enshrined into law, the GSM ramifications would be ridiculous. AT&T and T-Mobile would have to start somehow banning anyone using their SIM in a phone that's not "theirs", in case that phone happens to have another carrier's logo screened on it. Insane.
Hope the judge in this case doesn't have his head up his arse.