Apple In GreeNYC Challenge
Interesting post over on Treehugger today.
New York City is running a campaign called GreeNYC to convince New Yorkers to take steps to reduce greenhouse gases. New York design firm Turf was hired to designed a “stylized” apple, a longtime symbol of the city
Apple is challenging a patent made by the City of New York’s travel and tourism office. This patent application is being made for the logo created to help promote this cause.
Apparently, Apple feels that the logo is a little too Apple, so they’re saying: no dice.
Huh?
From Treehugger:
Apple claims that the GreeNYC mark is “likely to cause confusion, mistake or deception in the minds of consumers.”…”Any defect, objection or fault found with [GreeNYC's] goods and services marketed under [GreeNYC's] marks would necessarily reflect upon and seriously injure the reputation which [Apple] has established for its goods and services.”
Check out the logos and compare for yourself.
Do you think they have a leg to stand on?
My take: their lawyers are too confrontational. There has to be some angle that Apple is playing other than straight trademark infringement. Why in the world would they risk such negative publicity?
I bet they either remove the objection or provide style guidelines to “assist” in a slight reworking of the logo to everyone’s satisfaction. In the end, they may even put some money towards this cause. Possibly done without PR.
Don’t forget: Apple Computers was famously in long-standing litigation with Apple Records (the Beatles label, which didn’t do too much past the early 70s). Maybe they feel this is their chance to feel vindicated!
(full disclosure: I am an Apple user - Powerbook, baby!)