Other ridiculous examples:

Apple vs. Apfelroute - A bike path through a apple producing region https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article192836621/Apple-will-A...

Apple vs. Apfelkind - A small coffeeshop https://www.dw.com/en/german-caf%C3%A9-owner-takes-on-apple-...

It might be an thing for US companies, Apple is certainly not alone.

For instance Wendy's sued a local snackbar here in the Netherlands called "Wendy's". Same here, they somehow expected to win because they're big? [0]

[0]: https://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/zelfs-wendy-s-krijgt-wend... (Archive link: http://archive.is/oiFWv)

> Other ridiculous examples:

Actually I can see the relevance here, especially for that first case.

But as others probably mentioned already, if you don't actively defend your trademark it becomes void and you actually lose it. They don't do it for profit, as this actually costs them money. They rather don't really have any other option than doing that. Well, run the risk of losing the trademark of course. However the case with the pear confuses me, too ...

Trademarks are per industry/category. So going after companies where the similarly is already questionable and further, the industry isn't the same is not needed. The second link is about some coffee shop and the case was lost. Meaning, good example where Apple shouldn't have started the case.

There's also a difference between defending your trademark and going after things were the overlap is vague at best (e.g. the pear thing).

> Trademarks are per industry/category. So going after companies where the similarly is already questionable and further, the industry isn't the same is not needed.

Most of that is a myth, because people keep mixing it up with protected designs, names and the like. Trademarks are another league, though. Otherwise we'd have plenty of real estate businesses called Coca Cola and Apple with equally designed logos for example, and cases like Apple vs some Café would just disappear or not happen at all. Again, they don't do this for fun and giggles. It costs money and is necessary.

Previous discussion [1]

    Apple takes legal action against small company with pear logo (iphoneincanada.ca)
    738 points by lapcatsoftware 1 day ago | 329 comments

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24094143

Does Apple have some nefarious reason to do this? Because on the surface it makes little sense why Apple would take this action.

While I can see a couple of similarities between Apple's and Prepear's logos - they're both 2D images of fruits - they're almost completely different in every other way: one is a pear, one is an apple; one is green, the other is black; one is outlined, one is a block colour; one has a chunk taken out of it, the other doesn't; one is rotated slightly, the other is upright.

Given that I'm not sure how anyone could mistake Prepear's logo for Apple's, why would Apple be concerned about this, or even dedicate the time and money to go after Prepear? Not to mention the risk Apple is taking of attracting bad press for aggressively going after a small company in this way.

Is this just a case of a legal team trying to justify their value by bumping up the number of trademark violations they've managed to prevent this month? Otherwise what would the motivation be to do this given there is obviously no trademark risk here?

IANAL, but in general there are two reasons for things like this.

1 - Preventing trademark erosion. Companies have a duty to be proactive and continually challenge trademark infringements. If not, the trademark can become invalid. e.g. this happened with Sony's Walkman (TM).

However, they don't seem to have good grounds for it in this case. They are dissimilar enough (both in visual style and domain) that no reasonable consumer would get confused.

2 - Over-eagerness from the legal department. [Speculation, may not apply to Apple.] Pressure to get billables, to prove individual relevance, or even just busywork can -- in the absence of clear guidelines and policy -- lead to the legal dept taking unnecessary action. This becomes more true the more silo'd the different departments in a company are.

I believe this is a natural thing for big companies to evolve into, which can be addressed amongst other things through SOP's, guidelines, oversight (i.e. more people signing off).

Suffice to say that your average conglomerate cease and desist has not passed the desk of the CEO.

> Preventing trademark erosion. > However, they don't seem to have good grounds for it in this case.

Does that mean this is just suing companies for the sake of suing?

That might be jumping the gun a bit. Malice for the sake of malice is usually one of the least credible options.

Other valid possibilities:

- They don't agree with me on the first point.

- Someone followed an un-nuanced SOP.

- They expect a strategic benefit from this kind of attitude.

- People are making choices from a job-security perspective rather than a greater good (or even greater good of the company) perspective.

- ...

Apple should provide them with beautiful logo suggestions that are designed to be further from their own logo.

Preferably something that doesn’t look like a side view of your crotch on STDs.

They're opposing a trademark application.

I'm all for calling out big companies when they do crappy things, but you have to be seen to defend your trademarks & the system to allow businesses to contest trademark applications is there for a reason.

> I'm all for calling out big companies when they do crappy things, but you have to be seen to defend your trademarks & the system to allow businesses to contest trademark applications is there for a reason.

I always see this "defense" when big corporations abuse small companies by frivolous lawsuits... but with this you're actually saying that there's a chance someone will mix up a fruit logo of that small company with Apple's which is ridiculous. Especially since they don't share the market.

Please don't defend abusive corporations with this :/

Apple is not “required” to enforce its mark in every instance or risk losing it. The circumstances under which a company could actually lose a trademark—such as abandonment and genericide—are quite limited. Genericide occurs when a trademark becomes the standard term for a type of good (‘zipper’ and ‘escalator’ being two famous examples). This is very rare and would not be a problem for Apple unless people start saying “Apple” simply to mean “smart device.” Courts also set a very high bar to show abandonment (usually years of total non-use). Importantly, failure to enforce a mark against every potential infringer does not show abandonment

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...

> ‘zipper’ and ‘escalator’ being two famous examples

Or "iPad".

I dont think that has caught on to use anything other than referring to a Apple Made tabelt device

Tablet is still the naming for other non-apple devices though it seems the market has given up on them instead perfering larger phones

Please flag this.

It's been discussed before and it's basically another spam site.

I remember a case in Germany, where Apple did the same to a small shop with an Apple in their logo. They had to change their logo back then

That is nothing like an apple. Srsly!

Lol, this is so silly and meaningless.

What a shit company!