October 5th, 2009
Apple sees red (delicious) over grocery logo
At first blush, it’s hard to glean the controversy between Apple Inc’s famous Apple logo and the Australian grocery chain Woolworth’s new W logo, although, in gleaming green, it certainly look like apple peelings.
But Apple is seeing red delicious over the chain’s choice of logo for two pretty good reasons, as The Age points out.
First, Woolworth’s plans to package that appley W on “every imaginable product.” And second, among those products are several lines of consumer electronics. Consider that Apple is a computer and cellphone company that has become a premium retailer and that Woolworth’s is a retailer that already sells phones and could easily sell computers, and Apple seems to have a strong objection.
Notwithstanding the fact that Apple once disclaimed any confusion with the Beatles’ Apple label because it was a computer company, not a music company.
Woolworth’s designer Hans Hulsbosch, thinks Apple wants to stop logo with an apple or any other fruit in it. “Based on this logic, they would have to take action against every fruit-seller.”
Trademark law is a use-it-or-lose-it doctrine, however, and Apple has the lawyers to protest everything, so better safe than sorry.
