[HN Gopher] Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzer...
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Apple wants rights to the image of apples in Switzerland
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 225 points
Date : 2023-06-19 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 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.
| sk55 wrote:
| Nails it. This needs to be upvoted more.
| freedomben wrote:
| 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.
| zakki wrote:
| 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.
| dathinab wrote:
| 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).
| x3874 wrote:
| ...and couple it with the ridiculous stupid "one-word taken
| from regular language" brand naming decisions done by most
| startups and tech projects.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Nobody remembers the famous story of William Tell shooting the
| Macbook Air with a bow and arrow? It has been Apple Computer all
| along.
| k4rli wrote:
| Unfortunate how regular and even IT people don't care how evil
| and anti-consumer this company is. And still getting more popular
| somehow.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _" Hey, don't criticize my favorite trillion dollar
| corporation. I give them thousands of my dollars a year."_
|
| - HN
| freedomben wrote:
| 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.
| jeppester wrote:
| Better start looking for a new word for common round fruits.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| I would love a plot twist where Apple is forced to change it's
| logo in Switzerland.
| sledgehammers wrote:
| We need to break down these tech monopolies.
| BrotherBisquick wrote:
| Which market does Apple monopolize?
| ACV001 wrote:
| 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.
| hu3 wrote:
| > 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?
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| jeroen wrote:
| > 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....
| Retric wrote:
| 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_ "
| [deleted]
| fredoralive wrote:
| 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?
| [deleted]
| Tagbert wrote:
| 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.
| dtagames wrote:
| No forbidden fruit for you!
|
| More walled garden crap from Apple and another reason to stay
| away from their stuff.
| jeroen wrote:
| Their logo:
|
| https://www.swissfruit.ch/wp-content/themes/dudapress/dist/a...
| Timon3 wrote:
| That is remarkably different from the Apple logo.
| [deleted]
| ddingus wrote:
| 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.
| Manheim wrote:
| 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
| gymbeaux wrote:
| I'm sure they've already tried to get a parent on that
| tsunamifury wrote:
| That's the joke
| [deleted]
| ilyt wrote:
| > 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.
| pie420 wrote:
| [flagged]
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > yes, congrats, you got the joke he was making.
|
| The event is over ten years old. Plenty of readers may not
| know about it, so GP was explaining it for their benefit.
| Varqu wrote:
| 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.
| dmurray wrote:
| 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.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| A nice vindication, but only protects old companies, not
| new ones which are more likely to be victims
| bertil wrote:
| 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.
| tpmoney wrote:
| 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.
| ilyt wrote:
| > 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
| domador wrote:
| 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.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| 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.
| ginko wrote:
| Nah, just void their trademark.
| myshpa wrote:
| Nah, just abolish patents and trademarks.
| survirtual wrote:
| 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.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Imagine a world without parents!
| hakfoo wrote:
| 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.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Certificates can be a useful backstop but consumers would
| be taken advantage of by bad actors if marketing assets
| were otherwise identical.
| tpmoney wrote:
| For the same reason you probably want your domain
| registrar to prevent the registration of RayRal.com even
| though the SSL certificate would surely indicate that it
| was a russian scam site rather than the barely better
| american business.
| malfist wrote:
| 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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| 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.
| survirtual wrote:
| 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.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 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.
| yakireev wrote:
| _> 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?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| 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.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > 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).
| nico wrote:
| 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
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| 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...
| isykt wrote:
| >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.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think the Dairy Association recently has tried to litigate
| against products like Almond Milk to prevent them from using
| the word "milk".
| aio2 wrote:
| I thought the title was a joke, but now that I read it... what
| the hell.
| hello_computer wrote:
| 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.
| kossTKR wrote:
| 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I'm naming my company Applesauce
| Springtime wrote:
| 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...
| woobar wrote:
| 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...
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Probably scared they would be sued by Apple
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| 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...
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| 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.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| 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.
| tough wrote:
| 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.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Corporate lawyers also get paid whether they file
| lawsuits or not, so no, it's not really in their
| interests to file frivolous lawsuits.
| tpmoney wrote:
| 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.
| lm28469 wrote:
| We're talking about "apple" though, Apple the company didn't
| invent the word "apple" nor the shape of the fruit
| sweettea wrote:
| 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?
| CivBase wrote:
| No kidding. I'd love to see the bigger company loose their
| logo in one of these petty trademark disputes someday.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| It happened when McDonalds tried to trademark Mc in the
| European Union. They lost out to Irish company Supermacs.
| rdlw wrote:
| 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.
| mcv wrote:
| Sadly they're still called McDonalds here.
| rdlw wrote:
| 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.
| Springtime wrote:
| 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
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| 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.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > 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.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| 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
| foooorsyth wrote:
| >no good vision
|
| Interesting choice of words given their new product
| announcement a few weeks back at WWDC.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Funny how 'give more of it to employees' and 'lower prices'
| aren't really in the vocabulary
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| In their defense, most Apple employees are paid in stocks and
| share buybacks likely increases their compensation more than
| directly increasing their compensation.
| pdntspa wrote:
| 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...
| capitalsigma wrote:
| SWEs at Apple are not "barely able to afford rent"
| pdntspa wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| swores wrote:
| 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?
| driscoll42 wrote:
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > 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.
| rhyme-boss wrote:
| Or 'pay taxes'
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| 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.
| piva00 wrote:
| 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.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| 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.
| bkishan wrote:
| > no good vision
|
| Ah yes, years of continuing technical and product innovations,
| with "no good vision"
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| 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".
| izacus wrote:
| Attacking fruit sellers is not "a vision".
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| krono wrote:
| 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
| Retric wrote:
| > 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._
| [deleted]
| tpmoney wrote:
| 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
| krono wrote:
| 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.
| tpmoney wrote:
| 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=R
| OM....
|
| https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=R
| OM....
|
| https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=R
| OM....
|
| https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=R
| OM....
|
| https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=R
| OM....
|
| https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=R
| OM....
|
| 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=R
| OM....
|
| 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 Mariethoz 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I can't understand your punctuation-free prose. Could it
| be that you're an IP lawyer?
| tpmoney wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| fredoralive wrote:
| 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.
| denvrede wrote:
| 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...
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| 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.
| mcv wrote:
| 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.
| dathinab wrote:
| 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.
| fatfingerd wrote:
| 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.
| GTP wrote:
| This really sounds like an April fool's joke.
| perihelions wrote:
| 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)
| 6510 wrote:
| 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| 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?
| Croftengea wrote:
| I bet the lawyers at Apple have some weird KPIs related to
| number of cases.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > 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.
| ilyt wrote:
| 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
| hourago wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| meesles wrote:
| 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.
| imchillyb wrote:
| > ...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.
| andybak wrote:
| This comment is both true and utterly useless.
|
| You aren't in traffic, you are traffic.
| trumpeta wrote:
| 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.
| zilti wrote:
| [flagged]
| bluepod4 wrote:
| If you hear this "idiotic" take so often, then you should
| have had something more logical or thoughtful to say
| instead of not knowing where to begin.
|
| For starters, your last clause "rather than to pay 10 cents
| more for something less wasteful" reeks of unintelligence.
|
| Think about it. You were replying to a consumer. You,
| yourself, admit that you hear this "idiotic" take often.
| That means that you've heard many consumers say this a lot.
| So how can you say " _gasp_ consumers don't want that" when
| you literally admitted that you've heard many consumers say
| the opposite.
|
| OP could also say that they've heard your "idiotic" take
| often. You don't think "maybe consumers want it that way"
| is a cliche too?
|
| LMAO.
|
| (Sorry for being mean. I'm limiting myself to replying to
| one dumb person day. I was at 10 before.)
| nomad_monad wrote:
| [flagged]
| azinman2 wrote:
| 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.
| malfist wrote:
| 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.
| rajanaccros wrote:
| Certainly begs the question... are corporations and
| governments inextricable?
| meesles wrote:
| 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.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| 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.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| mcv wrote:
| 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.
| bvoq wrote:
| Free money for Swiss farmers is what I see here lol
| elp wrote:
| 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?
| LittleNemoInS wrote:
| For the record, there is a place called Apples in Switzerland :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apples,_Vaud
| hanselot wrote:
| 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."
| Runepika wrote:
| Given Apple's history with the Beatles, they should have some
| humility.
| tpmoney wrote:
| 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.
| entriesfull wrote:
| [dead]
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > "We're not looking to compete with Apple; we have no intention
| of going into the same field as them," Mariethoz 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)
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