My mother who works for Schlumberger a company that deals with patents all the time as a legal patent secretary and she is highly disagreeing with you but what does she know since it's you know, it's only her daily job to know?
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Apple Takes Legal Action Against Small Company With Pear Logo
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Yeah, I saw your post above. As I replied to you, the theory is good, but in practice, it has no sense. The name, the logo and the business segment of the targeted company ha
You are missing the point here. A company should protect its trademark when someone uses its trademark. That is the pre-requisite for falling under the abandonment clause. If another company starts to produce products with the same or similar branding as the iPhone or the Mac or the iPad, and Apple's dont file a claim, then yes, there is a risk of loosing your trademark. However, the case here is completly different. We have a company whose logo has objectively very little to do with Apple's logo (both are friuts and the logo is generic representation of that fruit), the business of this company has nothing to do with Apple past or existing products, the name of the company has nothing to do with Apple's name, and yet this tiny company is put into a delicate situation where they need to fight one of the biggest tech companies in the world to argument before court that Pearl has nothing to do with Apple. It is non-sense. Im a lawyer and in this case, my personal view is that Apple's case has no grounds and it is just bulling.
Applebee's was founded in 1980, when Apple was still small and in an entirely different line of business.Don't see Apple on the right side of this to be honest.
They let this go?
How about The Ohio State University and Oklahoma State University over OSU? I can't remember if they sued, but they eventually reached an agreement. I think it was less of an adversarial situation but one where regional trademarks could cause issues so coming to an agreement benefited both parties.
Both are black and white* outlines of fruit. That's enough.
*Yes, Black and White is the trademark applied for. Changing the color was a disingenuous move by Super Healthy Kids, Inc. to tug at the heartstrings for the Change.org petition.
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No it's not. It requires "that the defendant's mark is likely to cause confusion in the minds of consumers about the source or sponsorship of the goods or services offered under the parties' marks." That's pretty different from "it's an outline of a fruit". Unless the target audience is particularly prone to confuse their foodstuffs. The shape is distinctively different.
There is no such thing as "superficial infringement", it's either so similar that you confuse the two or not. The law only requires you to act on actual infringements.
I don't get why Apple need to do this, even at a small size, it looks nothing like the Apple logo. A fruit and a leaf, is that the trigger? Raspberry Pi is a fruit logo too, but it has 2 leaves, is a computer company, but was not sued.
Do not expect this to be answered here. Logic has been replaced by legalese early on in the thread by those who claim they "understand".
It just seems like a bully ( Apple...company with the most cash reserves in the world) trying to intimidate a small startup.
Then to the overwhelming majority here and everywhere else this article was posted on news sites Apple is in the wrong here.
No, that is not how trademark laws work. But you are free to continue to believe that.
We don't truly know Apple's motivations for this move, but it is just as likely that (rather than attempting to prevent a shrinking of their border of protection around their trademarks) it is a move to EXPAND their influence and control... to go after any company that uses a single piece of fruit in their logo.
Or, it could be that Apple has a service under development that when released WILL compete with PrePear and this is a move to squeeze a little guy out before they establish a presence.
100% completely wrong. This is what happens when laypeople attempt to practice law, and why Shakespeare said to kill all the lawyers. You risk losing trademark protection if you don't defend against infringing marks. This pear does not infringe on Apple's mark in the slightest, and Apple's claim that the pear logo can be confused with the Apple logo is an argument they must legally make, but that will never stand up in court.
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If Apple does that, a single lawsuit can unravel the entire App Store. Even Apple isn't that stupid.
If the degree of similarity is irrelevant, why hasn't Microsoft sued Google? Why hasn't Apple sued Amazon? Why aren't companies suing all other companies? Your reading of law leaves something to be desired.
Sure. But that is a different issue from why they don't (and can't) go after Applebee's.
Wrong.
Check the application. It does not specify a color and the example they give in their application is in Black and White.
Most people in this thread agree that the signs are not similar. And my point was that it's Apple fault. Being lazy and stupid they went with a fruit name and logo and now they claim that any fruit themed logo "dilutes" their brand. Of course it does. But whose fault is that?