Apple takes away someone else’s apple – Kommersant FM
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Apple is trying to destroy the trademark of a small family business from the Russian outback. The iPhone manufacturer sent a claim to the patent chamber against the Oryol Garden company; it produces its dried fruits under the ecoapple brand, and the Americans are demanding its cancellation.
Oryol gardeners received a notification from Cupertino that they could not use either the name of the apple in English or the image of the fruit, said the head of the Oryol Garden company Lyudmila Saltykova:
“The objections concern the fact that we use both the word “apple” and the sign of an apple, but they analyze all this as separate elements. We have registered a common element, a single one – the name ecoapple and inside the letter “o” there is an apple. We do not use them separately. And the iPhone manufacturer writes in its objection that we do not have the right and are misleading consumers.
In 2018, we passed registration, inspections, and examination at Rospatent. We didn’t want any overlap with Apple. We registered the logo in English only because at that time it was all in a hopeless situation, we just needed to earn money for the child’s treatment, for expensive rehabilitation.
We are a real micro-business, just getting on our feet. I inherited a fruit garden in Orel from my dad. There were a lot of fruits and berries there, we didn’t know what to do with them, everything was lost. And so we came up with such a project. We started drying fruits in the kitchen, then everything turned into some kind of mini-production. And to compete with such a large corporation, which has the best lawyers, advocates, frankly, is very scary.”
The ecoapple brand produces not only snacks. The company has also registered this trademark in other classes. The American corporation itself has registered more than 200 trademarks in Russia, including Apple, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPod and many others. The Americans are trying to squeeze Russian farmers out of the non-food segment of the market, explained Veronika Popelenskaya, a patent attorney from the Andrey Gorodissky and Partners law office:
“Apple Inc.” is trying to cancel from ecoapple only those categories of the international classification of goods and services that somehow intersect with the activities of the corporation. In addition to producing multimedia, phones, tablets, they also provide sales services and online courses. They do not touch the core products of Oryol Garden – food production, sweets.
As for the logo, the requirement is quite strange, because the image of an apple is very common. The apple on the Oryol Garden logo, which the Cupertino corporation is trying to cancel, differs from the Apple symbol. It is whole, not bitten, the leaf is turned in the other direction. Regarding the fact that it does include the Apple trademark, we can agree here, but only in classes on sales and online courses, education.
How did Apple even find out about the existence of a tiny company from the Russian outback? Each foreign copyright holder in Russia has its own patent attorney. Apple Inc. is represented by Baker McKenzie, now Melling Voitishkin & Partners. They filed on behalf of Apple Inc. objection to the Chamber of Patent Disputes. Most likely, large corporations are monitoring the situation. Naturally, the Americans will not come to us; they will be represented by a patent attorney in Russia. The parties will be heard and objections presented.
Perhaps the patent office experts will propose changes to the registration. If Oryol Garden limits its sales activities to confectionery products only, they will be able to avoid partial cancellation and perhaps even reach an agreement with the American company.”
Apple quite jealously monitors mentions of the apple in brands around the world. Three years ago, it tried to ban the Prepear company logo. This is an application for finding recipes and delivering groceries. The lawsuit noted that their green pear logo was too similar to the famous bitten apple. After lengthy legal proceedings, the pear was left, but with the condition that the shape of the leaf be changed.
This summer, Apple filed a lawsuit against the Swiss union Fruit Union Suisse. The farmers’ association has identified itself with a picture of a red apple with a white cross inside throughout its 111-year history.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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