Insanely, Apple’s lawyers have mounted a legal challenge to stop the Australian retailer Woolworths from using their shiny green logo, insisting that it is too close to its own.
Although Apple are famously litigious, this surely looks like a step too far – you’d have to be on some seriously mind-bending drugs to confuse the retailer’s effort with the internationality recognised Apple logo.
Commenting that Apple was taking trademark protection ”to the extreme,” logo designer Hans Hulsbosch remarked, ”Based on this logic, they would have to take action against every fruit-seller.”
Trademark lawyer Trevor Choy commented that Apple regularly try and stop others from using anything that resembled an apple in a logo or marketing, although less than 5 per cent of such actions actually make it to court.
Elsewhere, the Daily Tech reports that Apple’s lawyers have also been busy filing a patent designed to cut users off from using cell phone features:
Apple has long locked users out of features on its popular iPhone. Before the App Store, third-party apps were prohibited. Apple still locks out non-approved apps. It also locks phones to the network provider of choice in many nations, except those whose laws prohibit it to do such. And U.S. customers were locked out of MMS for several months and remain locked out of tethering features.
Apple has so much experience in denying users of hardware and software supported features that it decided to patent the concept. The Cupertino giant, whose impressive patent portfolio includes an exclusive patent on mobile multi-touch technology, filed a patent seeking to claim the rights to technology locking users out of features.
Ann Summers’ logo is much closer to the Apple one- and they seem to get away with it!