Apple lost in a trademark battle against Mexican telecommunications firm named iFone. Apple may pay potential compensation to the company. Will this affect iPhone 5 sales?

iFone said in a statement statement that a court denied Apple's bid to protect the iPhone name in a case that began in 2009. That year iFone filed a lawsuit against the tech company because the similar-sounding names that caused confusion to Mexican consumers.

Apple released iPhone to the Mexican market in 2007, four years after the Mexican telecom services and systems company says it registered the name iFone.

"It is the third time that Apple loses and this demonstrates the legal truth: iFone is within its full right to use its brand," iFone's statement said.

The lawyer of the Mexican company Eduardo Gallart told Milenio newspaper that Apple will have to compensate the Mexican company for the use of the iPhone name.

An amount has not been decided but Gallart said the law sets a floor rate of 40 per cent of the sale price of a service that is found to have violated the rules.

Apple, however, did not release any statement about this issue.

One of the biggest question is if it will affect teh sales of the company's latest smartphone iPhone 5. Although Apple may have lost in a trademark battle, it may not affect the sales of the company's famous handset since it is well-established in the tech market.

Moreover, iFone is not a direct competitor of Apple. iFone is probably looking for compensation that the Apple will have to pay for infringement.

Despite this loss, Apple announced that it has sold three million iPads in just three days since the launch of its new iPad mini and fourth generation iPad.

The sales doubled the previous first weekend milestone of 1.5 million Wi-Fi only models sold for the third generation iPad in March. The Wi-Fi + Cellular versions of both iPad mini and fourth generation iPad will ship in a few weeks in the US, Australia and many more countries later this year.

Both iPad mini and the new fourth generation iPad with Retina display are available in 34 countries including Australia, the US, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK, and will be available in many more countries later this year, including mainland China.

The demand for iPad mini exceeded the initial supply and while many of the pre-orders have been shipped to customers, some are scheduled to be shipped later this month.