According to a Wednesday report on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) website, Brazil's copyright regulator - the Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) - has ruled that Apple does not have the right to use its iPhone trademark in the country.

As per the INPI ruling, the rights to the iPhone name in Brazil is already owned by local consumer electronics maker Gradiente Electronica SA, which cannot be forced to stop using the iPhone name for its devices.

Though the INPI verdict does not place Apple under any order to discontinue the use of the iPhone name in Brazil, the tech giant has appealed the INPI ruling. Meanwhile, Gradiente has the right to file a lawsuit against Apple over the use of the iPhone trademark, but it has not yet disclosed the course of action it may be planning in this direction.

The INPI verdict implies that Apple has lost the iPhone trademark case in Brazil; something that unidentified sources had already hinted at to Reuters. The sources had told Reuters earlier this month that the patents regulator would like strip Apple of its claimed right to the iPhone trademark.

The disclosure by the Reuters sources was apparently based on the fact that the `iPhone' name had been registered by Gradiente way back in the year 2000; seven years before Apple's 2007 launch of its popular smartphone.