{"id":3092,"date":"2023-06-29T14:00:34","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/startups\/apple-is-taking-on-apples-in-a-truly-weird-trademark-battle\/"},"modified":"2023-06-29T14:00:35","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T14:00:35","slug":"apple-is-taking-on-apples-in-a-truly-weird-trademark-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=3092","title":{"rendered":"Apple Is Taking On Apples in a Truly Weird Trademark Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mari\u00e9thoz says that the Fruit Union is concerned because there is no clarity on what uses of the apple shape Apple will try to protect and because the company has been very aggressive in pursuing things that it perceives as infringements on its trademarks. \u201cWe\u2019re concerned that any visual representation of an apple\u2014so anything that\u2019s audiovisual or linked to new technologies or to media\u2014could be potentially impacted. That would be a very, very big restriction for us,\u201d he said. \u201cTheoretically, we could be entering slippery territory everytime we advertise with an apple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past few years, Apple has pursued a meal-prepping app with a pear logo, a singer-songwriter named Frankie Pineapple, a German cycling route, a pair of stationery makers, and a school district, among others. The company fought a decades-long battle with the Beatles\u2019 music label, Apple Corps, which was finally resolved in 2007.<\/p>\n

An investigation in 2022 by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit that researches Big Tech, found that between 2019 and 2021, Apple filed more trademark oppositions\u2014attempts to enforce its IP over other companies\u2014than Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and Google combined. Those companies also have trademarked common terms such as \u201cWindows\u201d or \u201cPrime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apple has precedent in Switzerland. In 2010 the trillion-dollar company got a small Swiss grocers\u2019 cooperative to enter into an out-of-court agreement declaring it would never add a bite mark to its logo\u2014a bright red apple inside a shopping caddy\u2014something which, according to the cooperative\u2019s president at the time, was \u201cnever planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things haven\u2019t always gone Apple\u2019s way, though. In 2012, Swiss Federal Railways won a $21 million settlement after it showed Apple had copied the design of the Swiss railway clock. In 2015, an existing \u201capple\u201d trademark in Switzerland, obtained by a watchmaker in the 1980s, forced Apple to delay the launch of its popular Apple Watch in the country.<\/p>\n

Apple is asking only for rights over a black-and-white image of an apple. However, according to Cyrill Rigamonti, who teaches intellectual property law at the University of Bern, that might actually give it the broadest possible protection over the shape, allowing it to go after depictions in a wide range of colors. \u201cThen the question [would be], is there a likelihood of confusion with regard to some other not-exactly-identical apple?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Irene Calboli, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law and a fellow at the University of Geneva, says that in Switzerland, anyone who can prove prior history of using a disputed sign has protection in a potential trademark dispute. That means it might be hard for Apple to enforce its trademark on organizations that have used the apple symbol for decades.<\/p>\n

However, she says, big, rich companies can often scare smaller businesses into compliance. \u201cThe system is very much skewed toward those who have more money,\u201d she says. Just the threat of expensive litigation against a huge company like Apple can be enough to intimidate people and stop them from doing \u201csomething that might be perfectly lawful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mari\u00e9thoz says that the Fruit Union is concerned because there is no clarity on what uses of the apple shape Apple will try to protect and because the company has been very aggressive in pursuing things that it perceives as infringements on its trademarks. \u201cWe\u2019re concerned that any visual representation of an apple\u2014so anything that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-startups"},"yoast_head":"\nApple Is Taking On Apples in a Truly Weird Trademark Battle | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mari\u00e9thoz says that the Fruit Union is concerned because there is no clarity on what uses of the apple shape Apple will 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