Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland | Hacker News Reader

Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland

wired.com

278 pointssohkamyung176 comments

> Following a protracted back-and-forth between both parties, the IPI partially granted Apple’s request last fall, saying that Apple could have rights relating to only some of the goods it wanted, citing a legal principle that considers generic images of common goods—like apples—to be in the public domain. In the spring, Apple launched an appeal.

And the worst part is that Apple is wasting tax-payer money around the world with this kind of mitigations. While it avoids paying taxes, illegally for sure but difficult to prove, it wastes money that could have spend in public education or health care. Apple is so big that it becomes pure cartoonish evilness without even trying. It is time to break up all these monstrosities.

Agreed. The only mandate for a corporation is growth and revenue. These goals are at odds with the good of people and our planet, as we've seen countless times.

Corporations consume most of our resources, produce the most waste, and damage _everything_ more compared to any individual. This won't change, because those with the power to do something benefit from the status quo and don't feel the damage they cause. Capitalism is a cancer that will consume everything.

I hope Apple loses and is forced to change their logo i to something like a bitten iPhone. The other company make actual apples and for longer than Apple, so they should have the right of way.

Do other forms of government not rape the land, build industry, dump chemicals and pollutants, etc?

Not sure the history of North Korea, China, Soviet Union, etc is an environmentalist paradise.

This is a form of "whataboutism" Just because some countries' governments are as bad as some corporations, does not mean either should get a free pass, or that corporations are not at fault for what they do.

The GP comment opposed capitalism in general. If you want to get rid of capitalism, that implies you have to replace it with something better

Capitalism isn't a type of government. You seem to have missed the point. The ever expanding need for material wealth is what destroys. It doesn't matter by whom or to what ends or under what name.

Certainly begs the question... are corporations and governments inextricable?

Corporations are governmental creations. There cannot be a corporation without a government.

> ...Corporations consume...

Humans are to blame, not some mythical piece of paper granting limited liability.

Greed is the root of every evil on Earth.

What is greed?

Greed, is self over all else. Self over others. Self over environment. Self over all other considerations.

Greed is what is killing, has killed, and will continue to kill this planet and its populace.

This comment is both true and utterly useless.

You aren't in traffic, you are traffic.

And yet humans are not unrestrained free rational actors but instead exist in systems of dominance and hierarchy. In most places of the world it's literally impossible for you to simply withdraw from society and live on your own in the wilds because there are no wilds, just somebody else's property. You're born into debt and servitude through the mere biologically reality of needing food and shelter and not having any way to access these without indebting yourself to someone else.

You do not need to be greedy to contribute to a system built on greed. Being born into that system, forced to contribute to it at the penalty of starvation and death and taught and raised not to question or even comprehend the system is enough.

Trademarks are a government-granted monopoly and as such are inherently not capitalistic.

The purpose of states is to restrict access to capital, to protect private property claims. Trademarks aren't even physical things you can claim as property, they're legal fictions trying to enclose culture the same way we have enclosed the land. By your reasoning owning a plot of land, or a factory or a stack of money is a government-granted monopoly and as such inherently not capitalistic.

Plots of land are physical things you can claim as property. Stacks of money are government creations in a sense, but I don't believe that without government creating fiat money, there would be no such thing as money.

And how do you claim as property a plot of land larger than you can patrol and guard yourself in a day? You can't. That's why enclosure is a fairly recent development historically speaking.

I'd recommend reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber if you want to understand how debt, money and states interconnect. I'm not saying you can't have money without states, I'm saying states are mechanisms to grant and enforce monopolies (i.e. exclusive access to and control of resources). If you want to maintain these systems without states, you'd end up with something resembling feudalism, which is just a more direct way to enforce property claims through violence.

> 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 apples, the fruit.

What is Apple going to do next? Try to get a patent on rounded corners for rectangular electronic devices?

I’m sure they’ve already tried to get a parent on that

That’s the joke

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.

Nah, just void their trademark.

Nah, just abolish patents and trademarks.

Patents and trademarks are a relic from the past that drastically suppresses innovation and puts technological advancement into slow motion, turning corporate moats into islands flying in the sky with forcefields of lawyers and bureaucracy, and enables a whole market of bad-faith parasites.

There is no good-faith argument for their existence. They hurt the general populace for the benefit of some tiny minority of mega-rich, sick people with a mutation selecting for sociopathic and greedy behaviors.

Abolish patents and trademarks.

A world without patents isn't necessarily one where corporations are any less of moats. Instead I'd expect a lot more secrecy and obfuscation measures to prevent successful reverse engineering of products and far more onerous employment contracts to stop leaks.

So what happens when yo invent/create a thing, attempt to commercialize it, and an established corporation just rips you off because there's no barrier to doing so?

You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Please don't deflect to some other issue (notwithstanding its validity) you don't have an answer for the question.

> So what happens when yo invent/create a thing, attempt to commercialize it, and an established corporation just rips you off because there's no barrier to doing so?

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. As of right now, the answer is: nothing happens. The established corporation profits, and you suck it up, because what else are you going to do? Sue Apple?

As of right now, you can file for patent protection if your invention is novel, and gain an exclusive right that's good for 20 years. While it's a mediocre system, it exists because people found the alternative of no rules at all to be worse.

That's where anti-trust law should come in.

Why would anti-trust have anything to do with it?

Anti-trust law is designed to prevent a reduction in competition and monopoly, if a dominant players actions risk killing this competition off, it falls within its scope.

Anti-trust law hasn't really kept up with modern times but a this can take many forms. Just look at how many large "startups" run at large losses, many claim scale will offer cost efficiencies but in truth its to capture the market after which they can pump up prices, this is basically dumping. Vexatious litigation should also be included.

The last 30 years have been a golden-era for those wishing to abuse their position, but there is hope with increased focus around the world.

Patents fit your rhetoric, but trademarks protect customers from rip-off merchants who, to create a relevant example, will take the insides of an Android phone, build an iPhone-shaped form around it, re-skin the OS to be like iOS, and then sell it as "an iPhone".

This is still the case even though Apple is obviously wrong here.

Except rip offs happen regularly still with little intervention, and giant corps use trademarks frivolously even when they know it's wrong, because they have deeper pockets and can litigate small companies out of business regardless of the merit of claims.

How anyone can own the likeness of a fruit that has existed for millions of years is beyond my understanding.

"Google" -- an invented word that did not exist prior to its conception forma company -- makes sense to protect. "Apple" does not. When you make a company name after a FRUIT, you should take on the risk associated with a public domain likeness and an inability to own it. Anything else is absurd.

> Except rip offs happen regularly still with little intervention

As with spam, what you see is what gets past the filter; the actual attempted rate is much higher, and gets goods seized at customs when C&Ds aren't enough.

As for "this is ridiculous": yes, that's why Apple lost the case it's here appealing.

But Apple also used to regularly lose to the other Apple Corp. because trademarks are separated by domain and the music company wanted to make sure the computer company never did music. Eventually they paid a lot of money and agreed to stop fighting.

https://youtu.be/kAG39jKi0lI

Agree parents are too often harmful but trademarks seem necessary for trust.

If I’m buying a can of Coca Cola with the logo I want it to be the real drink and not some fake import.

Imagine a world without parents!

Why not some sort of "certificate of origin" instead. Maybe it's a ugly looking government label or even a QR code, and misuse of it would be under deceptive-trading laws.

The point is for it to be functional, rather than letting rich firms land-rush anything (colours, shapes, fonts) that might be marketing assets.

In the end, you'd have 35 red cans with white text on the shelf, but the boring square label on the box tells you which firm actually made it.

Certificates can be a useful backstop but consumers would be taken advantage of by bad actors if marketing assets were otherwise identical.

For the same reason you probably want your domain registrar to prevent the registration of РayРal.com even though the SSL certificate would surely indicate that it was a russian scam site rather than the barely better american business.

Registered trademarks are to prevent "passing off", which is simply fraud. But to register a trademark, you have to list the product classes in which you intend to trade.

You should not be allowed to register your marque for a class in which you are not already trading. Apple doesn't trade in apples, so their registration application fails (or their lawsuit falls at the first hurdle).

Rebecca Vardy successfully registered the trademark "Wagatha Christie" against scores of classes of products that she doesn't produce. She didn't even coin the phrase; it was coined by a journalist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagatha_Christie

If there isn't a risk of customer confusion, then there should be no grounds for action. There ought to be something similar to anti-SLAPP laws to stop companies bringing frivolous actions for TM violation.

> You should not be allowed to register your marque for a class in which you are not already trading. Apple doesn't trade in apples, so their registration application fails (or their lawsuit falls at the first hurdle).

Or at least in classes you aren't intending to trade in, and you should lose it if you aren't a short period of time after registering

I think there is merit to patents too, just not in there current form.

Patents were envisioned as a way to share innovation and progress while still protecting the inventor for enough time to make a profit. I think when they first were created it was 8 or 12 years. Not the 70+ it is now.

It was also required be be a non-obvious, specific invention. Slide to unlock which was a patent war apple won against google clearly goes against this "non-obvious" intent. Specific has also went to the wayside in software. When dyson applies for a patent for a new vacuum cleaner they specify exactly how the new suction is generated. Software patents are much more like "a device that sucks" is the patent. Woe be it to you if you create something else that sucks.

Bring back short terms, specificity and non-obvious requirements. Then patents help by protecting innovation instead of stifling it.

Void all trademarks that are unmodified common nouns. If a company wants exclusive rights to a word they should have to invent their own word or at least find a novel way to spell an old word.

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.

A nice vindication, but only protects old companies, not new ones which are more likely to be victims

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.

> 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.

Or bleed other side out of money till they yield

The thing is, there's no expensive proceeding happening. There's no "battle". Apple owns two "apple image" trade marks that were formerly logos used by Apple Records (of The Beatles fame). The Swiss government approved one of them and provisionally denied the other, and Apple is appealing that denial. It's normal every day business proceedings trumped up with fear mongering and hypothetical drama to make a story out of nothing.

Maybe corporations should have their freedom for filing lawsuits capped in some way to a reasonable, but not unlimited, proportion that would force them to prioritize their lawsuits, hopefully hindering their ability to pursue claims that serve as frivolous, bullying land grabs. Society's courts should not end up functioning as a corporations' business development departments. A rough draft of some possibilities:

- Limit the size of a corporation's legal departments, both in number of personnel and annual budget - Limit the amount they can pay lawyers each year for filing lawsuits - Limit the number of lawsuits that can be filed at any time in a given, national (or other, very large) jurisdiction. After a certain amount, require the company to put a certain amount of their annual revenue in escrow for each additional lawsuit. This amount would be forfeited if the lawsuit is lost.

Congratulations! Apple has now split into Apple Legal 1, Apple Legal 2, Apple Legal 3, all subsidiaries of Apple Inc., and their IP has been redistributed. They now have three times the lawsuits.

No, some shitstains just need to go to jail to learn. They are actively harming our societies, and the lack of defense justified by "but free market" is mind boggling. Nowhere else would we tolerate such a virus.

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 over the details. People are posting: Attacking fruit sellers… over a hypothetical concern from a trademark application.

Black and white Granny Smith Apples as it applies to electronic devices and a few other narrow categories, isn’t all Apples or even close to all apples. Yet, trademarks allow such extreme protection even different fruit can be covered.

> 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....

It's the logo for Apple Corps / Apple Records, the Beatles' company (whose trademarks are now owned by Apple Inc and licensed back to them).

The uses mostly match up with the areas of business a record and film company like Apple Corps would trade in?

First their design patent I am referring to is about a very specific cellphone design including button placement for volume, camera location, etc.

That is logo and they don’t want it to cover handbags, bicycles, paint, pens, toasters, hats, harmonicas, refrigerators, milk, earrings, green tea, fast food, wine, hair cuts, bananas … aka 99.9% of all products and services.

Apple however owns Apple+ which makes original content and they do want that business model covered, thus the long list of things that cover a tiny area. https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/

PS: The need to list each medium seems silly with 3 types of CD listed here: “pre-recorded compact discs, audio tapes, gramophone records, video tapes, video discs, DVDs, CD-ROMs and interactive compact discs”

Their logo:

https://www.swissfruit.ch/wp-content/themes/dudapress/dist/a...

That is remarkably different from the Apple logo.

Boy, that logo really isn't a matter of confusion.

Seeing it, and the Apple computer one in something like a list or logo cloud, would not raise questions.

Looks like it is another stupid unscrupulous gang of lawyers and accountants who have no ethical or moral views that are exploiting laws and regulations to gain more power. I have no respect for brands that behaves in this way

> What is Apple going to do next? Try to get a patent on rounded corners for rectangular electronic devices?

For those that haven't seen it

https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec...

yes, they actually did.

It was widely derided at the time because most people don’t have much experience with design patents.

Like many companies, Apple typically files a design patent for their products. This gives them some leverage when going after clone products. Those designs typically include drawings and descriptions of the product. The description for the iPad included the phrase “a rectangle with rounded corners”. In the context of a design patent, that means a particular rectangle with specific rounded corners as illustrated in the accompanying diagrams. Someone read that and started posting that Apple was patenting all rectangles with rounded corners. That meme took off much faster than any more mundane explanations of what the patent actually covered.

In practice, the patent was not enough to prevent Samsung from launching a tablet with rounded corners that looked suspiciously similar to an iPad.

> In practice, the patent was not enough to prevent Samsung from launching a tablet with rounded corners that looked suspiciously similar to an iPad.

I'd suspect they let it slide because it was Samsung, more than anything ?

Patents are a tougher deal when you opponent has the war chess to fight you to the bitter end.

No forbidden fruit for you!

More walled garden crap from Apple and another reason to stay away from their stuff.

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"

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

> Without any other reasonable explanation for why they should

You want a reasonable explanation such as they might want to use a 3D logo when launching a 3D product their currently spending millions advertising.

No other explanation except that they’re registering a very specific logo which they are now the owners of but has been used in trade since the 60s within the domain of trade relating to the historical use of that trademark (that is music and related media). You know, exactly the sort of thing you might expect the owner of a trademark to do in all the relevant legal jurisdictions where it might be using that mark in trade

That's precisely the point I was trying to make in response to my parent; Fruit Union's fears are fully justified as there'd be no reason for Apple to pursue this trademark if they weren't intending to exploit the perks of its ownership in the future.

Yes, the perks of its ownership like enforcing their trade mark in the trade they are engaged in. Specifically the sale of music and the licensing of that mark back to Apple Records. Again they aren't trademarking the concept of apples, or all pictures of apples, nor is the application for anything more than the categories under which that trademark was. Further more, the application is not really any different from any number of other trademarks for which the Swiss government has already registered for Apple, such as:

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

or perhaps most relevantly this one which is the other Apple Records mark that they own and was granted full protection for:

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

Realistically this article is pure rage bait mixed with some clever marketing by the Swiss fruit union. They're not seriously worried, they're getting free press by stirring up controversy over an absolute nothing. And you can tell because of this weasel word line:

>“We have a hard time understanding this, because it’s not like they’re trying to protect their bitten apple,” Fruit Union Suisse director Jimmy Mariéthoz says, referring to the company’s iconic logo.

They would understand if Apple were (and indeed already has as linked above) trademarking their Apple Computer logo, but they somehow don't understand why Apple is also trademarking the logo of Apple Records which they also own? Either everyone involved in this article from the fruit union reps all the way up to the editors are completely ignorant of Apple Records, their logo and the previous IP battles regarding that logo or they're playing dumb for the sake of making a story.

I can't understand your punctuation-free prose. Could it be that you're an IP lawyer?

Good thing they’re not attacking anyone then. They’re very clearly from the linked application in the article trying to register a trademark for a very long standing trademark that they now own within the realm of trade that said trademark has been traditionally used. That is, they’re trying to register the Apple Records (of the Beatles fame) logo as a trademark in the realm of music and related multi-media.

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".

>no good vision

Interesting choice of words given their new product announcement a few weeks back at WWDC.

They also had a memorable "Can't innovate anymore, my ass!" moment at a past WWDC . I'm firmly waiting for an actual product in stores and people using it in their living room to judge on Apple's vision.

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.

Are rank-and-file (not engineering) employees of Apple compensated in enough stock that buybacks are really worth that much? I highly doubt it. And even then, until those shares are sold they are subject to the whims of the market. Paper millionaire status doesn't mean shit if you can barely afford to pay rent.

A bird in hand is worth two in the bush...

SWEs at Apple are not "barely able to afford rent"

I'm not talking about SWEs. Who cares about them. I am talking about Apple Store employees, or the dudes behind the 'genius' bar, or Jill from marketing

Considering many shareholders are not employees, how could giving money (/increasing share price through stock buybacks) for shareholders affect employees compensation more than directly giving it to the employees?

Or 'pay taxes'

This is one of those things where I can go either way on. I'm not mad about the taxes I pay but we're I, or anyone, given the option to reinvest that money into MyFamilyConsulting LLC or give it away via my own self-directed charitable endeavors I would do it without even thinking about it.

I'm in Business School and took a class in Finance. In a lecture the professor presented what to do if a company has too much cash, the options where:

1. Invest in positive NPV projects 2. Store some for a rainy day 3/4. Pay divdends or stock buybacks

Only after did I think "You know, what about lowering prices or paying employees, these options are soley about shareholders". But... yes, managers are taught to think about increasing shareholder wealth above all.

> But... yes, managers are taught to think about increasing shareholder wealth above all.

Saving money for a rainy day helps employees, too. Investing in new projects does indirectly because staffing up those projects increases the demand for labor, so the price of labor goes up.

The good old trickle down.

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.

We can thank Jack Welch for making it popular to consider shareholders as the most important cohort of people to be rewarded when a business goes well... His way of managing businesses completely infests MBA programs around the world.

That's a different question. But at some point, Apple spending the money to expand into a new product line is less effective than giving money to shareholders and letting them invest the money.

Then why buy Apple shares if you don't want Apple to invest your money?

Buy shares in a profitable company and then demanding that it channel all it's profits back to you isn't an investment - it's an attempt to grab a fruit (sic) of somebody else's earlier investment.

I do agree that sometimes, if the company hasn't got any good ideas for investment, then the right thing is to give the money back. However, overall I think shareholder/financial short-term-ism is largely destructive - limiting companies ability to invest.

But then those short term often shareholders don't have to pick up the cost of destruction - especially if they avoid paying tax ( the state/tax payer picks up the restructuring cost with unemployment benefit etc ).

If Apple's trademark conflicts with an older established trademark, shouldn't the older one win, and therefore invalidate Apple's trademark? I would strongly support a law that automatically invalidates trademarks when abused for silly nonsense like this. Give the big corps something to lose.

yes, through only the trademark in context of this specific field

Trademarks are in general not for all fields, e.g. Apple for "computers" but not for literally selling apples or medizine.

The problem is they can just abuse various laws to continuously sue a company in all kinds of fields going again and again into revision until the smaller company can't afford the legal fees anymore even if they win.

If I were their competition, I would bank roll every organization's trademark feud with them in the hopes that one is as successful as Budvar.

The trademark isn't being abused though. There's no actual battle here. All that's going on is Apple is attempting to register one of two trademarks for the Apple Records logos that they have owned since 2007 and has been in trade usage since the 60's. One was granted, the other was provisionally denied, Apple is appealing that denial. This whole article is speculative nonsense that feels like a publicity stunt for the fruit union.

Was puzzling they didn't include an image of said logo[1]. IIRC I've observed this for some other articles in the past covering trademark disputes. Is there a common reason they might do this?

[1] https://www.swissfruit.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/sov_new...

Probably scared they would be sued by Apple

Trademarks, unlike copyright, are "use and protect it or lose it". There's no "expiry" date on them like copyrighted things have because brands sometimes live for over a hundred years. Letting someone take your companies name and logo just because you're "too old" isn't fair. This is because trademarks, unlike copyright, aren't about science and innovation; they're about preventing consumer confusion.

Not protecting your trademarks can cause them to become "genericized". Wikipedia has a list of many that you've probably heard of and had no idea they were once trademarked.[0]

Some lawyer at Apple probably caught wind of this Swedish company and took action. It's really that simple.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

We're talking about "apple" though, Apple the company didn't invent the word "apple" nor the shape of the fruit

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.

Sadly they're still called McDonalds here.

Losing a trademark just means that it's not protected, and anyone can use it. Burger King Sweden was directly making fun of the Big Mac in their menu for a while after this case, since they could do it legally.

This is not what happened, they had the trademark for "Big Mac". They took Supermac's to court because their name was too similar, and ended up losing the trademark.

For a while Burger King Sweden was selling burgers using the name, apparently the "Anything But a Big Mac", "Burger Big Mac Wished it Was", etc.

The way you describe it is a myth. Half of the 'genericized' products were done so as a concession of WW1 or the company willfully choosing something overly generic for royalties or poor circumstances (flip phone, videotape, respectively). The rest expired, were caught in disputes with other companies, or occurred before expansions of copyright law.

You'll notice the rest of the page is legally protected trademarks that have NOT expired, despite common and generic use by individuals. Hoover did not lose their brand, nor Kleenex.

Trademarks are limited to the trades (i.e. 'goods& services') listed in the trademark application. Apple, Inc doesn't sell apples. Nor do they have apple farms. Visit USPTO's TESS and search for serial number 87628828. The "Goods and Services" field contains no mention of fruit, farms, or produce.

You must diligently protect your trademark against uses by others in similar markets. I would hope that protecting your computing business against apple farmers would get you, at a minimum, a frown and a "no" from a judge or the enforcing agency.

That is true. That argument also got Apple Records off Apple's back in the old days; they weren't in the music business (until they did with iTunes and were sued again). I think the lawyers are being too ambitious with this lawsuit, and will lose, but my comment was just clarifying why lawyers would bring such a case.

Lawyers get paid regardless of the outcome.

Is on their best interest to bring as many frivolous loosing lawsuits as Apple is willing to pay for.

Corporate lawyers also get paid whether they file lawsuits or not, so no, it's not really in their interests to file frivolous lawsuits.

People keep themselves busy (or soon they're out of their job). When there's no high or medium priority studs to do, people move to the low priority and do it, even if useless.

There’s no lawsuit though. The article is literally about an application for trademark registration Apple filed in 2017 and a now subsequent appeal of the specific portions of that application which were denied and a hypothetical by an interested third party that too broad a grant might cause conflict in the future.

I was just meaning if there was a reason why articles exclude the logos in question but I suppose this reply generated its own comment chain :p

> There's no "expiry" date on them like copyrighted things

Federal trademarks expire after 10 years and you have to renew them or lose them.

>Some lawyer at Apple probably caught wind of this Swedish company and took action. It's really that simple.

It's not even that. There's no action being taken here other than Apple appealing the provisional denial of a trademark registration for the Apple Records logo in the trade domain of music and related multi media. The Swiss government approved one of two logos, and Apple is trying to get the other approved. That's it. No "action" against any Swiss companies. Every bit of the article talking about Apple conflicting with the fruit union is 100% hypothetical speculation.

>Some lawyer at Apple probably caught wind of this Swedish company and took action.

SWISS company.

Here is the logo they used before 2011. [1] Not sure what inspired the new one.

[1] https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/54990-111552-001-pr...

Unfortunate how regular and even IT people don't care how evil and anti-consumer this company is. And still getting more popular somehow.

"Hey, don't criticize my favorite trillion dollar corporation. I give them thousands of my dollars a year."

- HN

As someone who actively avoids products from companies with practices I find distasteful or disgusting, even though I would benefit from and enjoy those products, this fact is one of the most frustrating for me. "Vote with your dollars" is a powerful and highly effective strategy for making companies do the right things, but it only works if people are willing to make choices with consideration for morality/ethics/etc rather than selfishness (I don't necessarily mean that derogatorily, I mostly just mean "what's better for them").

For many things (such as cheap Chinese goods made by people in a labor camp) I think the economic realities of people having limited money are powerful (and legitimate) enough that it may not be reasonable to expect them to care, but with Apple products that's not the case. These are luxury products that are expensive, and the people who buy them could absolutely afford to buy an alternative. They just don't want to because they like or love the products and are willing to turn a blind eye about the companies practices (or invent/adopt crazy post-decision rationalisms churned out (or at least approved) from Apple's marketing department.

What am i going to do about it? Viva la revolution?

Every time i vote, some weirdo does stupid things i did not vote for. Every time i pay, some weirdos do stupid things with the money. Every time i complain, nobody really does anything. Every time i'm taught, i'm taught money is everything above anything else.

People with loads of money do really stupid things.

I on the other hand, can't afford to care.

Apple tried to do (kind of) the same stupid stuff a couple of years ago with a german company. They lost [0].

[0] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/markenstreit-cafe-apf...

> “We’re not looking to compete with Apple; we have no intention of going into the same field as them,” Mariéthoz says, adding that one of the biggest gripes the 8,000-odd apple farmers he represents had with the attempted fruit grab was that, “you know, Apple didn’t invent apples … We have been around for 111 years. And I think apples have been around for a few thousand more.”

Heh, succinctly put. What is Apple Inc. going to go after next? Actual Macintosh apples[1]?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_(apple)

Wired knows better. Apple is required by US trademark law to file pro forma objections to other similar logos because if they don't, they can be accused of constructive abandonment' of their own mark which will drastically limit their ability to seek recourse against genuine infringement.

The problem here is not Apple, but the perverse incentives in US trademark jurisprudence.

Do you truthfully think that Apple the computer company is at risk in the US (or anywhere for that matter) of losing their trademark if they don't go after a union of fruit growers in a completely different market with a logo that is not in any way confusing to consumers?

No doubt what you say is true for some infrigement cases and should be blamed on US trademark jurisprudence, and the US does badly need reform of IP laws, but blaming that for this move by Apple seems like a major stretch.

Apple isn't going after anyone. They're registering a trademark for the Apple Records logo in the trade domain of music and related media. That's it. There's no conflict here other than hypotheticals made up for the article.

Nails it. This needs to be upvoted more.

Apple is part of the problem here. This case is in Swiss which is not using US trademark law. The logo is clearly different, the products of both companies/org are different. But still Apple wants the other apples. I wish all Apples fanboys all over the world create an online petition to oppose this action.

It would be nice if ONCE the court said "well, they were first, you need to stop using apple logo"

That would shut them up from trying for a decade or two

I'm not a lawyer but I would have thought the fruit union food trademark would be in a different trademark class to Apple's computer trademark accoring to the WIPO Nice list. (https://www.wipo.int/classifications/nice/nclpub/en/fr/help/)

Would this have any chance or are Apple just planning to bludgeon the other side with lawyers until they run out of money?

They're not bludgeoning anyone. They applied for a trademark registration for one of their marks, it was denied and they are appealing that denial. That's all that's going on. The rest of the article the hypothetical "what if"

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.

How about fuck Apple? This is not the intent of IP and trademark laws, and Apple are the ones actually trying to abuse these laws to their advantage.

Apple are far from the only ones trying to do this sort of thing. In the past, we've seen companies trademark specific colours, common words ("windows"), and lots of other things.

What trademark offices and judges need to remember is that the only reason trademarks exist, is to protect customers against impostors. Any trademark case that doesn't involve even the slightest chance of impersonation or confused customers, should be slapped down hard with a fine for the company bringing the lawsuit.

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.

I hope Apple loses the rights to use anything related to apples in the EU for wasting taxpayers money and time. They can fuck off just as all other large companies that tries to turn the world into a corporatocracy.

EU's relatively large fines to the US tech sector has been a breath of fresh air, lets do more of that on a global basis.

I hope so too, but Switzerland isn't in the EU so I doubt the EU will take action unless the Swiss government invokes one of the many treaties and trade deals in response to this.

Given Apple's history with the Beatles, they should have some humility.

Their history with the Beatles is exactly what is at issue here. They’re filing a registration for the Apple Records logo, which they now own the right to as it pertains to use in trade in and around music and related media.

Welcome to Earth: Where the NEWS is our barometer for determining how far we are from 1984.

It's articles like these that invoke a sense of surreal prescience. I remember experiencing this same eerie feeling back when I was still trying to convince my employer that WFH would be unavoidable. The CXO (I put X because I can't remember what made up executive role they had at the time) still shrugged it off as "Just a flu".

I remember sitting at a coffee shop at the beach one night with a close friend talking about the general state of things and how it felt crazy to know that soon things will be different forever in ways we can't begin to imagine. Back then I made a thread about it, though, given the channish nature of it, nobody here cared much for it either (you know, it was back in the early days, when "Hug an Asian" campaign was still taking place in the US, you know, the same time as the "fiery but mostly peaceful protests".

This title has a similar feeling to it. The only difference is the enemy now is not some invisible force of nature, but humanmade horrors we impose upon ourselves.

Anarchy as a concept always sounded insane, but look at what the people who have the most money in the world do with it. They don't give a fuck about the issues that are actually important. They will release a PR and keep up appearances while renting out server farms of bots to subdue critical opinion, and subvert any efforts to point these things out by creating fanatics (which is ironic, because fanaticism in today's world is a fully captured market - complete with branded interactions).

Now we are the ones in need of fanatics. People like RMS, who called these things from the start. Yet we turn our backs on them and call them insane. We let companies smear and tarnish their image.

We are at the point where we need a revolution, but we won't get one, because the last humans that haven't been enslaved by comfort are falling every day, and people are remarkably adept at being satisfied living in squalor if the previous iteration was just slightly worse.

Its difficult to imagine how the world will look in this future where only a single school of thought is permitted.

As a gay man from Africa, I apologise if my lived experiences come across as provocative. "Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’…This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."

Hmm, are you calling out the clickbait of the article? I couldn’t fully understand.

The particular apple in the trademark linked in the article[1] is the logo of Apple Corps / Apple Records. The settlement of the trademark dispute between Apple Corps and Apple Computer led to the trademarks being transferred to Apple Computer[2], and licensed back to Apple Corps. So in some ways, this is partly The Beatles' fault.

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

[2] Who promptly renamed themselves to just Apple.

Wouldn't it be perfect if the judge in a turnabout rules that Apple loses the right to its logo in Switzerland. That would be very fair.

Nobody remembers the famous story of William Tell shooting the Macbook Air with a bow and arrow? It has been Apple Computer all along.

Does anyone ever get the feeling of creeping abomination? Or the nagging suspicion that we are neglecting a duty--to answer such affronts with examples written in blood? These machines grind people down, poison the land, and seek percentages that would make the most tyrannical feudal lord blush.

Carroll Quigley had interesting things to say about corporations.

For the record, there is a place called Apples in Switzerland : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apples,_Vaud

Proposal:

Remove single common word trademarks, no one has a right to constraint general language usage like that.

Even if we look at the law being able to do single common word trademarks where meant to be very restrictive like Apple "for computer hardware" but not Apple for selling literal Apples. The only problem is this laws never fully considered companies with massive horizontal expansion (e.g. computer hardware + OS + phone + App Store + Music lable + TV setup box + movie streaming + payment provider).

...and couple it with the ridiculous stupid "one-word taken from regular language" brand naming decisions done by most startups and tech projects.

I realized things should move in the opposite direction when I was asked to do SEO on someones website. My response was hell no the product was: actual windows.

Related?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4551943 ("Apple accused of ripping off famous Swiss clock design") (2012)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4770659 ("Apple Pays Swiss Federal Railways $21 Million For Clock Icon") (2012)

I'd love to see an interview with one of these lawyers. What trauma does it take to warp a human mind into thinking you can own the concept of images of a fruit? Or is this a case of pure sociopathy and the rule of law is the only thing stopping these guys from torturing animals and running over kids in the street?

> What trauma does it take to warp a human mind into thinking you can own the concept of images of a fruit?

That trauma goes by its other name: "money." Or sometimes by its synonyms, "Dollar, Pound, Euro, Swiss franc" among others.

I bet the lawyers at Apple have some weird KPIs related to number of cases.

We need to break down these tech monopolies.

Which market does Apple monopolize?

This is kind of the opposite of a similar situation that just happened in Chile

The company NotCo got sued by the milk producers association for mis-using the word Leche (milk in Spanish) in their NotMilk product so it doesn’t use the word Milk

The milk producers won and the courts have ordered NotCo to change the name of their NotMilk product

I feel like that is (should be?) more about food safety rather than IP. If you call it X but it has no nutritional similarity to X, that could be dangerous to consumers.

That's not to say other attempts at protecting food-related terms aren't profit protection instead. Take "champagne" for example...

>If you call it X but it has no nutritional similarity to X, that could be dangerous to consumers.

And yet nobody seems to have been harmed by the existence of these terms:

(1) Sweetbread

(2) Coconut Meat

(3) Coconut Milk

(4) Nutmeat

(5) Headcheese

(6) Welsh Rabbit

(7) Rocky Mountain Oysters

(8) Boston Cream Pie

(9) Scotch Woodcock

(10) Cold Duck

None of which refer to the nominal food definition of the term in their name.

I think the Dairy Association recently has tried to litigate against products like Almond Milk to prevent them from using the word "milk".

You don't get to name your company after an object that literally grows on trees and then start to restrict people's ability to depict such an object or use it in some way commercially. I hope Apple gets rightfully fucked on this.

I would love a plot twist where Apple is forced to change it's logo in Switzerland.

What an April fools joke of a company, suitably funded as such, they should be forced to rename back to Apple computer and shut up already

edit: But who are we kidding here, all publicity is good publicity

This shit makes me wanna stop using Apple products

> the Granny Smith

This apple is as ugly as sin (it's all lumpy) and it's too sour to eat (it's a cooking apple).

And this is one of the problems with having a purely capitalist system. It kind of works, but to a certain degree. If you let the corporations grow uncontrollably, in the end they become so powerful that they control governments (and not the other way around as it should be). This is already happening, but we either don't know or don't care. Also, the patent system is broken. There are many examples of absurd patents and so called patent wars. It looks like the system is not well designed and is open to various exploits.

Apple really is a awful company. You vote with your money! - don't vote Apple, FFS.

I thought the title was a joke, but now that I read it... what the hell.

"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3:4–5

Better start looking for a new word for common round fruits.

Free money for Swiss farmers is what I see here lol

This really sounds like an April fool's joke.

That's because most of the article is make believe. The only battle is the one made up by the author and the union PR rep.

I’m naming my company Applesauce

Thurgau says, „GTFO.“

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