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'Bullying' Apple fights couple over pear logo
When Natalie Monson started her food blog 11 years ago, she didn't expect to end up embroiled in a fight with the world's most valuable company.
But the US small business owner is now battling Apple for the right to use a pear in the logo on her recipe app.
In a patent filing, Apple said the image was too similar to its own logo and would hurt its brand.
Ms Monson says the tech giant is simply "bullying" and she feels a "moral obligation" to fight back.
More than 43,000 people have already signed the petition she and her husband Russ, owners of the Super Healthy Kids website, created last week to try to pressure the company to back down.
Also At:
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Apple vs Prepear: Besides Pear, There are Atleast 10 Other Companies Using Fruit Logos, Will Apple Come After Them Too?
Apple objects to trademark registration application of a recipe app; Here's why
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday August 12 2020, @01:43PM (5 children)
So Apple is claiming the rights of what? All Ellipse shaped objects that may or may not be fruit related? That they could somehow be to similar or? It's not like the Apple logo has always looked the same either. The current form of it is not how the logo looked to begin with. That said it's been somewhat similar since the 1977, except it at that time looked more like some kind of Apple-related gay-pride fruit. The rainbow pattern was fairly common tho, Commodore used it to and so did Sinclair. I guess it was more about showing that they could use colours or something. Anyway they changed the color of it but the form have remained the same as far as I can tell since then.
But they seriously look nothing like each other except on some very basic geometrical form, in which case Apple is indeed claiming ownership all round or ellipse type logos. Which will be some massive lawsuit then cause there are a lot of those logotypes around. The Pear logo is more elongated, the leaf is not in the same place, the apple has theirs on top while the one in the pear logo is on the side. The Apple logo is solid, or filled, while the Pear logo is just an outline that has empty space in the middle. The Apple logo is black (these days), the Pear logo is Green.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8615673/Apple-takes-small-company-court-pear-shaped-logo.html [dailymail.co.uk]
If this wasn't Apple this would have been laughed out of court in a moment, or to say if the situation had been the reverse where the Pear people sued Apple.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @02:58PM (4 children)
The pear company is just getting started - fresh trademarks are almost always the defendants in these cases, hard to argue that Apple is infringing my brand when I have let them run rampant with it in the global marketplace for the last 40 years.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:01PM (3 children)
But that's how you do it, so they have more money for you to steal if you win the court case
Granted you should probably sue them before they can hire a team of 100 ninja lawyers
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:16PM (2 children)
The law itself protects them, if they have been practicing the use of the logo openly for a long time, any previous "rights holders" who have not vigorously defended against infringement lose their rights via abandonment.
That's all Apple is trying to do here: protect themselves against abandonment claims. There are all kinds of ways to do that, most of them involve lawyers and therefore are usually painful for everyone else involved.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:06PM
But the point of a trademark is to be a unique mark to prevent confusion.
If Apple claims any generic shape kind of like a round fruit, doesn't that make confusion in itself?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:37AM
If that were the case, they should have taken action years ago. This logo has been in use for over a decade and now Apple decides they want to enforce their rights.