“It’s not even an apple,” said Ms. Carlisi, 46, who had just begun releasing music and has seven monthly listeners on Spotify. “You’re telling people that they cannot appropriate fruit or anything that has this connection to Apple, which is this juggernaut company.”
Founded in 1974, the company known originally as Apple Computer was not always so litigious. Before 2000, it filed just a handful of trademark oppositions each year, peaking at nine in 1989, according to the Tech Transparency Project. At least one of those oppositions was to an electronics retailer that sold computer parts under the name “Pineapple.”
In those years, Apple Computer was better known as a defendant in trademark cases. In 1978, Apple Corps, the holding company founded by the Beatles, sued Apple Computer for trademark infringement, the first salvo in a series of legal disputes between the two companies over the ensuing decades. In 2007, the two Apples finally agreed to give the Silicon Valley company all of the trademarks related to “Apple.”
By then, Apple, which had dropped “Computer” from its name, was filing dozens of trademark oppositions annually.
As Apple grew, its legal team most likely wanted to prevent the brand’s dilution, said Barton Beebe, a New York University Law School professor. In intellectual property theory, the legal argument isn’t that someone would be confused by two different trademarks, but rather that granting a new one would reduce the value of a household logo or name, he said.
“Dilution is death by a thousand cuts, and you’ve got to prevent the first cut,” Mr. Beebe said. “That’s the argument to judges.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/apple-trademarks.html
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