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> 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

by hu3 3y ago

> 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?

gymbeaux 3y ago
I’m sure they’ve already tried to get a parent on that
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  That’s the joke
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Varqu 3y ago
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.
- ginko 3y ago
  Nah, just void their trademark.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    Nah, just abolish patents and trademarks.
    - survirtual 3y ago
      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.
      - AlexandrB 3y ago
        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.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        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 3y ago
        > 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?
        anigbrowl 3y ago
        As of right now, you can file for patent protection if your invention is novel, and gain an exclusive right that's good for 20 years. While it's a mediocre system, it exists because people found the alternative of no rules at all to be worse.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    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.
- dmurray 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    A nice vindication, but only protects old companies, not new ones which are more likely to be victims
- bertil 3y ago
  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.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    > 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
  - tpmoney 3y ago
    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.
- domador 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
Retric 3y ago
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 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jeroen 3y ago
  > Apple applied for a design patent for a very specific design https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/jsp/data.jsp?KEY=ROM_ACT.1028240&TYPE=jpg&qi=qYa5qUuLJhZG0xOHC+ISq5lgskMVkkrJNFuLpeAg0bY= 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.1028240&DES=1 https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=ROM....
jeroen 3y ago
Their logo: https://www.swissfruit.ch/wp-content/themes/dudapress/dist/assets/images/logos/SOV_Logo.svg https://www.swissfruit.ch/wp-content/themes/dudapress/dist/a...
- Timon3 3y ago
  That is remarkably different from the Apple logo.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ddingus 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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
ilyt 3y ago
> 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-rectangle-with-rounded-corners https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec... yes, they actually did.
- pie420 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > 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.
Tagbert 3y ago
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.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  > In practice, the patent was not enough to prevent Samsung from launching a tablet with rounded corners that looked suspiciously similar to an iPad. I'd suspect they let it slide because it was Samsung, more than anything ? Patents are a tougher deal when you opponent has the war chess to fight you to the bitter end.
dtagames 3y ago
No forbidden fruit for you! More walled garden crap from Apple and another reason to stay away from their stuff.

by hu3 3y ago

gymbeaux 3y ago

I’m sure they’ve already tried to get a parent on that

tsunamifury 3y ago
That’s the joke
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Varqu 3y ago

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.

ginko 3y ago
Nah, just void their trademark.
- myshpa 3y ago
  Nah, just abolish patents and trademarks.
  - survirtual 3y ago
    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.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      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.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        > 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?
        anigbrowl 3y ago
        As of right now, you can file for patent protection if your invention is novel, and gain an exclusive right that's good for 20 years. While it's a mediocre system, it exists because people found the alternative of no rules at all to be worse.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  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.
dmurray 3y ago
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 3y ago
  A nice vindication, but only protects old companies, not new ones which are more likely to be victims
bertil 3y ago
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.
- ilyt 3y ago
  > 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
- tpmoney 3y ago
  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.
domador 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.

Retric 3y ago

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 3y ago
[deleted]
jeroen 3y ago
> Apple applied for a design patent for a very specific design https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/jsp/data.jsp?KEY=ROM_ACT.1028240&TYPE=jpg&qi=qYa5qUuLJhZG0xOHC+ISq5lgskMVkkrJNFuLpeAg0bY= 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.1028240&DES=1 https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=ROM....

jeroen 3y ago

Their logo: https://www.swissfruit.ch/wp-content/themes/dudapress/dist/assets/images/logos/SOV_Logo.svg https://www.swissfruit.ch/wp-content/themes/dudapress/dist/a...

Timon3 3y ago
That is remarkably different from the Apple logo.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ddingus 3y ago
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 3y ago
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

ilyt 3y ago

> 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-rectangle-with-rounded-corners https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec... yes, they actually did.

pie420 3y ago
[flagged]
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > 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.

Tagbert 3y ago

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.

makeitdouble 3y ago
> In practice, the patent was not enough to prevent Samsung from launching a tablet with rounded corners that looked suspiciously similar to an iPad. I'd suspect they let it slide because it was Samsung, more than anything ? Patents are a tougher deal when you opponent has the war chess to fight you to the bitter end.

dtagames 3y ago

No forbidden fruit for you! More walled garden crap from Apple and another reason to stay away from their stuff.