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Comment by hu3 | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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.

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

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.

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”

> 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.

No forbidden fruit for you!

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

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

That’s the joke

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