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Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

wired.com

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Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#41

Post by sashank_1509 »

bkishan wrote: post #12
sashank_1509 wrote: post #8

The kind of ridiculous situation that arises when a company is drowning in money with no idea what to do about it. Make work for lawyers, Make work for engineers, share buybacks, no good vision on how to spend the money

> no good vision Ah yes, years of continuing technical and product innovations, with "no good vision"

It really is relative. If Apple was spending even a majority of it's profits in new products then I would take back my statement. Spending a paltry billion a year (Estimated for Vision Pro) when you make more than 200 billion in profits, and the majority of profits going into share buybacks is "no good vision".

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#42

Post by sashank_1509 »

pdntspa wrote: post #32
sashank_1509 wrote: post #8

The kind of ridiculous situation that arises when a company is drowning in money with no idea what to do about it. Make work for lawyers, Make work for engineers, share buybacks, no good vision on how to spend the money

Funny how 'give more of it to employees' and 'lower prices' aren't really in the vocabulary

In their defense, most Apple employees are paid in stocks and share buybacks likely increases their compensation more than directly increasing their compensation.

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#43

Post by danlugo92 »

surgical_fire wrote: post #18

It would be fun if they lost also the trademark of any apple-related image, including their silly bitten apple logo. Really, fuck IP and trademark laws. I see it as a net negative. I would rather throw this cursed baby away along with its shit water.

IP, copyright and trademark are greed codified into law.

Musicians should earn money from performances not bits.

Painters should earn money from originals not reproductions.

Photographers should earn money from shoots or originals (don't upload a high quality copy to the internet duh).

Everything else is greed. One of the capital sins at that.

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#44

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

CivBase wrote: post #17
sweettea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that Apple is infringing on this Swiss company's trademark and must be forced to change their logo before logos with apples are irreversibly associated with Apple instead of the Swiss company?

No kidding. I'd love to see the bigger company loose their logo in one of these petty trademark disputes someday.

It happened when McDonalds tried to trademark Mc in the European Union. They lost out to Irish company Supermacs.

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#45

Post by HWR_14 »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #8

The kind of ridiculous situation that arises when a company is drowning in money with no idea what to do about it. Make work for lawyers, Make work for engineers, share buybacks, no good vision on how to spend the money

At some point, every company's "how to spend the money" has to turn into "give it back to the shareholders and let them seed more ideas". Infinite growth is pretty impossible.

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#46

Post by krono »

Retric wrote: post #38
izacus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attacking fruit sellers is not "a vision".

Which isn’t what’s happening. A fruit seller has a hypothetical concern over a trademark application, which is how you turn a non story into a story on a slow news day.

  Apple is manoeuvring itself into a position where it could
  Without any other reasonable explanation for why it should
  Except for the one of which Fruit Union is afraid it would

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#47

Post by jeroen »

Retric wrote: post #27
hu3 wrote: post #6

> THE FRUIT UNION Suisse is 111 years old. For most of its history, it has had as its symbol a red apple with a white cross—the Swiss national flag superimposed on one of its most common fruits. But the group, the oldest and largest fruit farmer’s organization in Switzerland, worries it might have to change its logo, because Apple, the tech giant, is trying to gain intellectual property rights over depictions of appl…

As always, the sound bites obscure the issue. The concern is not the specific request, but how widely trademark is enforceable, which is a question of IP law not Apple’s actions. Apple applied for a design patent for a very specific design and ignorant people flipped out completely misunderstanding the issue. Yet again there’s another story where the details matter and you get articles like this completely glossing o…

> Apple applied for a design patent for a very specific design

https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/jsp/data.jsp?KEY=ROM_AC... doesn't look like a very specific design to me, but like a pretty generic apple.

> as it applies to electronic devices and a few other narrow categories

This is neither a few nor narrow, imho:

Musical sound recordings;

sound recordings featuring entertainment, music, musicians, documentaries, biographies, interviews, performances, reviews, historical narratives, drama and fiction;

musical video recordings;

musical cinematographic films;

video records and cinematographic films featuring entertainment, music, musicians, caricatures, cartoons, animation, television programs, documentaries, film excerpts, biographies, interviews, performances, reviews, historical narratives, drama and fiction;

sound recordings, video records, cinematographic films, namely, television programs, motion pictures, audio visual records and audio video film footage for television and other transmission;

audio and visual recordings featuring or relating to music, entertainment and films;

pre-recorded compact discs, audio tapes, gramophone records, video tapes, video discs, DVDs, CD-ROMs and interactive compact discs, all featuring or relating to music and films;

digitally recorded sound and video records featuring music, entertainment and cinematographic films;

downloadable musical sound and video records;

downloadable sound and video records featuring or relating to music, entertainment and films.

--

Source: https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=ROM....

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#48

Post by dmurray »

Varqu wrote: post #16
hu3 wrote: post #6

> THE FRUIT UNION Suisse is 111 years old. For most of its history, it has had as its symbol a red apple with a white cross—the Swiss national flag superimposed on one of its most common fruits. But the group, the oldest and largest fruit farmer’s organization in Switzerland, worries it might have to change its logo, because Apple, the tech giant, is trying to gain intellectual property rights over depictions of appl…

There should be a penalty for such bogus trademark claims, best as % of the global revenue. Then, maybe, they would learn that a corporation cannot bully others only because it has unlimited legal resources.

An elegant way to do it would seem to be to require the court to consider both directions of possible trademark infringement.

If it was even remotely possible the court would rule "yes, we agree with the plaintiff's arguments that these are similar trademarks, and there is the possibility for consumer confusion, therefore we must check whose trademark has priority... turns out it's the grocers who have used the symbol for 111 years and Apple Computer owe a few billion in back licensing fees" then the lawyers would be terrified of filing the suit.

Re: Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

#49

Post by bertil »

Varqu wrote: post #16
hu3 wrote: post #6

> THE FRUIT UNION Suisse is 111 years old. For most of its history, it has had as its symbol a red apple with a white cross—the Swiss national flag superimposed on one of its most common fruits. But the group, the oldest and largest fruit farmer’s organization in Switzerland, worries it might have to change its logo, because Apple, the tech giant, is trying to gain intellectual property rights over depictions of appl…

There should be a penalty for such bogus trademark claims, best as % of the global revenue. Then, maybe, they would learn that a corporation cannot bully others only because it has unlimited legal resources.

Those proceedings are expensive, and I can’t imagine Apple expects to win. I suspect it’s one of those proceedings that they feel compelled to run because they expect to lose the value of their trademark if they don’t.

To me, it sounds like airlines flying empty because they wanted to keep their airport slot: give them a guarantee that they’ll keep their spot and they’ll be happy not to waste fuel and pilot hours on an empty flight.

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