Apple is all set to lose the ‘iPhone’ trademark in Brazil as the Brazilian Institute of Intellectual Property plans to grant the ‘iPhone’ trademark to a Brazilian electronics company named as Gradiente Eletronica SA. It is being reported that the Brazilian company had registered the name ‘iPhone’ back in the year 2000, a good seven years before the Apple iPhone made it’s debut.

Brazil is Latin America’s biggest market and it is being said that Brazil’s copyright regulator will officially announce the decision next week on February 13.

Though the Brazilian company Gradiente Eletronica SA had the naming rights for ‘iPhone’ much before Apple, the company released it’s iPhone-branded smartphone last year in December, running on Google’s Android OS and retailing for about $302. The smartphone from the Brazilian manufacturer comes in both Black and White colors, just like Apple’s offering.

Apple still has the option of challenging the decision in Brazilian courts but no comment has been made by the Cupertino-based giant yet.

Eugenio Emilio Staub, chairman of IGB ( the company formed after the restructuring of Gradiente) , said in an interview in Sao Paulo that it hadn’t been contacted by Apple yet and also added that, 

[Source: Bloomberg]

However, product-name dispute isn’t something new for Apple as there have been instances in the past where the company has been involved in such disputes. Back in 2007, at the time of releasing the first iteration of the the iPhone, Apple had gotten into a tussle with Cisco Systems over the iPhone naming rights in the US, before finally settling the dispute in February 2007.

The company’s other mass-popular product, the iPad was also involved in a similar controversy in China, where a company named Proview had entered into a dispute over the rights to the iPad trademark. The dispute even went to the extent of threatening the sales of Apple iPad in China, but it was finally settled in July last year for an amount of $60 million.