iPhone maker Apple wants to get exclusive rights to all depictions of the actual fruit. The Cupertino-based tech giant is reportedly continuing to contest the trademark of its popular fruit logo. According to reports, Apple is not giving up on its six-year-old fight against Fruit Union Suisse.
Tech businesses frequently copyright their logos or catchphrases like Windows or Galaxy. However, there are occasions where businesses register tens of thousands of trademarks (even when they are not required to do so) in order to fend off potential competitors who may use terms or emblems that are similar to those found in their flagship products.
Apple can be more aggressive than most of its rivals in protecting its IP (intellectual property) rights against competing businesses among these tech giants. The iPhone manufacturer, however, is going above and above by going for the entire fruit, apple, rather than just its already-trademarked, half-bitten apple. It also requests that a fruit manufacturer alter its branding.
Apple is suing Fruit Union Suisse, a 111-year-old association of fruit farmers, over the latter's official emblem. The organization's emblem is a red apple with a cross in the white of the Swiss flag overlaid on top. The Fruit Union Suisse's logo is being reconsidered because of Apple's efforts to get intellectual property rights on images of the fruit, according to the media reports.
Director of Fruit Union Suisse Jimmy Mariethoz claims that Apple's proposed trademark has nothing to do with their half-bitten apple. "Their goal is really to own the rights to an actual apple," he continues, "which, for us, is something that is really almost universal and that should be free for everyone to use."
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This isn't the first time Apple has taken legal action against a business for utilising a fruit-themed logo. Prepear, a meal-preparation startup, caught Apple's attention in 2020 due to their branding that resembled a pear. Apple said that Prepear's pear emblem is comparable to its own half-bitten apple logo, which is used on the iPhone.
The startup eventually had to make a minor change to the logo. The media reports claim that Apple has sued many start-ups worldwide for using fruit-themed logos, citing data from the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
In 2021, the company lost a trademark claim against Swiss Federal Railways and was forced to pay a settlement fee of $21 million. In 2015, Apple had to delay the launch of the Apple Watch in Switzerland due to a patent from 1985.
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