Apple wants to register the Thunderbolt trademark

Apple has filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for "Thunderbolt." This name is used to describe a new data transfer protocol.

The Thunderbolt trademark was previously believed to belong to Intel, the technology's primary developer. After discovering that the trademark was not officially registered, Apple decided to file for it.

Apple became the first PC vendor to use Thunderbolt in its devices. This technology provides data transfer rates of up to 10 Gbps, twice as fast as USB 3.0.