Ford and General Motors have one of the longest-running rivalries between any two companies on earth, and the cross-town foes are always looking to one-up each other. The latest example of this comes in the form of a new lawsuit, filed by GM and its self-driving subsidiary Cruise against Ford, which aims to block The Blue Oval from using the name BlueCruise for its forthcoming hands-free highway driving feature, according to Reuters. The issue, it seems, is that GM believes that this term infringes on its trademark of the rival automaker’s own hands-free driving technology, SuperCruise, which was first announced back in 2012.
“While GM had hoped to resolve the trademark infringement matter with Ford amicably, we were left with no choice but to vigorously defend our brands and protect the equity our products and technology earned over several years in the market,” the automaker said in a statement. “Ford knew what it was doing. Ford’s decision to rebrand by using a core mark used by GM and Cruise will inevitably cause confusion.”
GM also noted that it and Ford had engaged in discussions in an attempt to avoid legal action, but those talks apparently failed. Meanwhile, Ford spokesperson Mike Levine called the lawsuit “meritless and frivolous,” arguing that the word “cruise” is widely used by a variety of automakers in a number of ways.
GM’s claim is meritless and frivolous. Drivers for decades have understood what cruise control is and “cruise” is common shorthand for the capability. Any number of companies use the word “cruise” to brand driver assist technology. That’s why BlueCruise was chosen. https://t.co/zxhW1EONG4
— Mike Levine (@mrlevine) July 24, 2021
“GM’s claim is meritless and frivolous,” Levine said. “Drivers for decades have understood what cruise control is and “cruise” is common shorthand for the capability. Any number of companies use the word “cruise” to brand driver-assist technology. That’s why BlueCruise was chosen.”
Ford Authority reported that Ford’s Co-Pilot 360 suite of driver-assist features was getting a new addition, then called Ford Active Drive Assist with Hands-Free Mode, back in June of 2020. Last October, October, Ford Authority reported on how this new feature would work in the 2021 Ford F-150 and 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E, and this past April, Ford announced that it would officially be called BlueCruise when it launches later this year, and just last month, the automaker revealed that Lincoln’s version of this hands-free driving tech will be called ActiveGlide.
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Comments
Lol. This is sibling rivalry if I’ve ever seen it. To be fair, the name BlueCruise is very stupid. There are a million different names they could’ve come up with.
Ford AutoDrive
Ford DirectDrive
Ford Co-Pilot Complete
Ford Escort (lol)
Ford AutoGuide
etc. etc.
Also, with BlueCruise, were they going to use that for Lincoln too?
Ford should have trademarked the name “General” and told GM to go stuff themselves.
WOW! You sure can rattle on. Ford and GM have worked on many projects together but maybe they need to work more with each other to better deal with sales lost to Hundia & Honda, Toyota and let’s not forget Kia 😀
Scrolling down to comment, I went past a snippet where GM donated money to the Henry Ford Museum.
Anyway, they, GM, could call theirs AutoCruise and be one up in the alphabet
This is like nobody could refer to Green Oval because only Blue has right to be attached to Oval. Where is IBM, Big Blue, and why are they not also suing Ford?
If BlueCruise infringes on SuperCruise, doesn’t SuperCruise infringe on Super Duty?
I would think the kids show Blues Clues from Nickelodeon would be more pissed than GM, but what do I know.
I think everyone should be suing GM for using the term “automobile” when describing the junk they’re building.