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Apple could force a 111-year-old fruit company to change its Apple logo

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Re: Apple could force a 111-year-old fruit company to change its Apple logo

#5
I'm not sure if Switzerland is under the EUIPO but I suspect European courts (not limited to the EU) are usually not very sympathetic to foreign companies trying to claim trademark on traditional brands https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49254551

Re: Apple could force a 111-year-old fruit company to change its Apple logo

#7

How the heck does one copyright a whole-ass image of an apple, wtf?

Trademark, not copyright. The weird thing is the expectation that trademarking an apple could be done in a way that is broad enough to cover all apple-based logos across all industries. I'm not sure how accurate this portrayal is given that Apple does indeed not sell fruit and the logo in question is likely pre-existing and does not actually resemble anything Apple has likely tried to file.

Trade dress or so-called "design patents" are a different matter (see Apple suing over every smartphone copying its design of "a slate of glass with a camera cut-out and maybe a button" or German Telekom pretty much holding the exclusive rights to a specific shade of magenta in tech-adjacent products).

Re: Apple could force a 111-year-old fruit company to change its Apple logo

#8

How the heck does one copyright a whole-ass image of an apple, wtf?

Nitpick: it's not copyright, trademarks are part of Industrial property[1] and have different legislation.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_property

Re: Apple could force a 111-year-old fruit company to change its Apple logo

#9

How the heck does one copyright a whole-ass image of an apple, wtf?

It is suprising what you can do with hundreds of lawyers and several congressmen.

It's especially surprising considering those congressmen should in theory have exactly 0 power over anything in the country where this lawsuit is taking place.

But honestly, Apple has bitten a bitter fruit on this one; there's no way they'll win this.

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