Case: Apple paid millions to buy out brand license, prompting AOL rebrand
Steve Case · AOL: Steve Case · Apr 3, 2017 · at 10:43
AOL co-founder Steve Case explains how Apple's decision to retract its brand licensing agreement for AppleLink led to the birth of America Online.
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“It was, I think, the first time Apple licensed their brand to another company, and indeed, not long after, within the first year of launching the Apple Inc. Service, Apple basically decided they didn't like the idea of, you know, they wish they hadn't licensed the brand, and so we had a little bit of a standoff, and so we eventually had to rename the service. They paid us a few million dollars to kind of go away quietly, and that's when we, you know, had to rename it, so we called America Online.”
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