It is no secret that a company’s trademark plays a vital role in driving its business. Be it McDonalds, Starbucks or Windows, their logos or names are so ingrained into people’s consciousness that they need little to no introduction. And one among them is Apple.
The Cupertino-based tech firm’s half-bitten apple is one of the most iconic logos. Since the time of its conception (1977), Apple (the firm) has been selling its electronic products with the same trademark.
But now it is seeking more.
Apple’s arm-twisting techniques?
According to reports, Apple is looking to trademark the full apple fruit. It has sued a 111-year-old farmer’s organisation called Fruit Union Suisse which has been using apple (fruit) as its official emblem.
The Fruit Union Suisse uses a logo featuring a red apple with a white Swiss cross superimposed on it.
The organisation’s director, Jimmy Mariéthoz, said they are baffled by the tech firm’s approach.
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“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 Mariéthoz told Wired UK news outlet.
“Their objective here is really to own the rights to an actual apple, which, for us, is something that is really almost universal … that should be free for everyone to use.”
Battle since 2017
Since 2017, the US-based tech firm has been trying to secure Intellectual Property (IP) rights of the fruit in Switzerland and has launched similar applications in several other countries, Wired UK report.
At that time, Apple sought IP rights for a realistic, black-and-white depiction of an apple variety known as the Granny Smith—the generic green apple.
It wanted to use the logo mostly on electronic, digital, and audiovisual consumer goods and hardware.
Years later in 2022, the Swiss Institute of Intellectual Property awarded a partial win to Apple, saying that the company could have the rights to only certain of the submitted categories.
Now, Apple is appealing to win the rest of the rights.
Not the first time
This is not the first time that Apple has fought to appropriate the apple trademark. In 2010, the trillion-dollar company got a small Swiss grocers’ cooperative to enter into an out-of-court agreement declaring it would never add a bite mark to its logo—a bright red apple inside a shopping caddy.
In 2020, Apple went after Prepear, a meal-preparing start-up, for using pear-looking logo. Apple argued that Prepear’s pear logo was similar to the iPhone maker’s half-bitten apple logo. Eventually, the start-up had to slightly modify the logo.
(With inputs from agencies)
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