In the next logical step of corporations intruding in every aspect of our public
and private lives, Apple is attempting to trademark depictions of actual apples.
Not just their iconic logo that you just saw on the screen,
which shows an apple with a bite mark in it, but regular, plain old apples.
Now the oldest union of fruit farmers in Switzerland, the Fruit Union Swiss,
are concerned that Apple's latest attempts to trademark
apples is gonna impact the logo that they've been using for 111 years.
Speaking to Wired, we have a hard time understanding this because it's not
like they're trying to protect their bitten apple, Fruit Union Swiss
director Jimmy Mariethoz says, referring to the company's iconic logo.
Their objective here is really to own the rights to an actual apple, which for us is
something that is really almost universal, that should be free for everyone to use.
And if you're wondering how this is gonna impact them specifically,
let's pull up a picture of their logo.
Here it is.
It is an apple with the symbol from the Swiss flag right in the middle.
And the logo makes perfect sense because the apple is one of Switzerland's
most common fruits, and this is a union representing fruit farmers.
But the Swiss are actually not Apple's first trademark victims.
In fact, Japan, Turkey, Israel, and Armenia have already
given the tech giant the trademark rights to apples generally.
And once Apple has those trademark rights,
it enforces its trademark vigorously.
As an example, over the past few years,
Apple has pursued a meal-prepping app with a pear logo,
a singer-songwriter named Frankie Pineapple, a German cycling route,
a pair of stationery makers, and a school district, among others.
The company fought a decades-long battle with the Beatles' music label,
Apple Corps, which was finally resolved in 2007.
Now, Apple's been trying to secure this trademark in Switzerland apparently for
quite some time, and it's had some moderate success, but
also had to face a couple of setbacks.
According to Wired, Apple's attempts to secure the trademark in Switzerland go as
far back as 2017, when Apple submitted an application to the Swiss Institute of
Intellectual Property, IPI requesting the IP rights for a realistic black and white
depiction of an Apple variety known as the Granny Smith, the generic green apple.
The request covered an extensive list of potential uses.
Following a protracted back-and-forth between both parties,
the IPI partially granted Apple's request last fall, saying that Apple could have
rights relating to only some of the goods it wanted, citing a legal principle that
considers generic images of common goods like apples to be in the public domain.
In the spring, Apple launched an appeal.
Of course, we don't know the results of that appeal yet.
It's still pending.
But they are fighting for the right to own the trademark for apples.
Now, I have some good news for the Swiss fruit farmers union.
At least, it seems like it on the face of it.
Irene Calboli, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law and
a fellow at the University of Geneva,
says that in Switzerland, anyone who can prove prior history of using a disputed
sign as protection in a potential trademark dispute.
That means it might be hard for Apple to enforce its trademark on organizations
that have used the Apple symbol for decades.
But whether or not Apple can enforce its trademark on small companies and
organizations through the legal system might not even matter if they can
strong-arm those companies outside of court.
However, Calboli says, big,
rich companies can often scare smaller businesses into compliance.
The system is very much skewed towards those who have more money, she says.
Just the threat of expensive litigation against a huge company like Apple can be
enough to intimidate people and
stop them from doing something that might be perfectly lawful.
And I mean, Cenk,
this is a David versus Goliath story where Goliath almost always wins.
Particularly, we see here in IP law in the United States,
the company that can afford to prolong litigation is the company
that's going to win, even if they have no legal basis to do so.
>> Well- >> Not always.
>> You say tomato, I say tomato.
You say real apples, I say Apple owns them.
How do I like these apples?
I kinda like them.
So here's my counterpoints.
Not counterpoints, but I'm gonna go along with their legal principles.
So every once in a while, Ben and Ana Kasparian here will do an hour together,
and our fans have dubbed that the Banana Hour.
Ben and Ana, Banana, okay?
Sorry, we now own all bananas, okay?
And we will enforce that copyright on everyone,
including the bananas themselves, and we will seize them.
Not only that, the show is called The Young Turks.
We now own all Young Turks.
As long as we're being absurd, why don't we just claim everything?
Look, guys, here's how Switzerland should have adjudicated this case.
There's two factors here that end this case immediately.
Let's bring up the logo again for that market,
the Schweizer Obstverband Fruit-Union, okay?
>> [LAUGH] >> Okay,
that doesn't look like anything like Apple's logo.
>> No.
>> Done.
Case is already over.
Number two, given around 111 years, as Rayy explained to you guys.
Apple hasn't been around 111 years, done, over, next.
He's next, okay?
Why are we still having this conversation?
[LAUGH] Okay, and the reason we're still having this conversation is because of
massive corporate power across the world.
It's not just in America.
They go and have these team of lawyers, and look, are there legitimate cases?
Sure.
Sometimes cheesy folks across the world like, have I seen a Starbucks
in Turkey that's a coffee shop with a mermaid with a slightly different look?
Yes, I have.
Should they enforce their patent and copyrights there?
Sure, they should.
There's a real reason for those laws.
Is it overreach to claim all the apples in the world?
Yes, yes of course it's overreach.
Look, there's gotta be some sort of consequences for frivolous lawsuits,
especially if they're brought by a giant corporation.
I don't know how you make that distinction in law and
you don't have to work on that bill, etc, but no, don't go around
bullying everybody trying to claim copyright to every apple in existence.
That's absurd, and everybody should know that.
But I will give them a little bit of credit, Rayy.
They at least brought Turkey and Armenia together,
not for a great cause, but to bow down to corporate power.
But it is the only thing that has brought Turkey and Armenia together, other than,
ironically, TYT.
>> [LAUGH] I'll just say I was a TA for
property law my last two years of law school.
I'm an award-winning legal mind.
I got a CALI Award for property law [LAUGH] despite having
very deferring beliefs about property than a lot of legal scholars.
That being said, I used to use as an example for my students Dumb Starbucks
from the show Nathan for You, where there was a failing coffee shop and
his suggestion for them was just to call themselves Dumb Starbucks and
put Dumb in front of every single drink.
But the menu was exactly the same as Starbucks.
[LAUGH] The logo was exactly the same as Starbucks with Dumb in front of it.
And that was my example of like, this is not fair use [LAUGH].
This is a violation of any type of intellectual property law
you can imagine versus the logo from the poor farmers union
that they've been using for 111 freaking years [LAUGH].
You were right, it doesn't look anything like the Apple logo.
It's so absurd that they might assert their trademark over them.
>> Okay, even though this is so obvious, it's so frustrating that these cases
haven't been dismissed immediately cuz they're so over the top absurd.
But I'm gonna give you one needless example anyway, one more example.
So there was a restaurant in Miami when I lived there, it doesn't exist anymore.
And I went there and I'm like, God,
this looks identical to the Cheesecake Factory menu, right?
And it turned out that the owner was Turkish, okay?
So I start talking to him in Turkish, and I said, brother,
this kinda looks like the Cheesecake Factory menu.
And he's like, yeah, yeah,
we got one of the cooks from the Cheesecake Factory and totally copied it.
>> [LAUGH] >> I'm like,
you know you can't do that, right?
He's like, yeah, we'll be all right.
[LAUGH] Okay.
And by the way, later, Cheesecake Factory caught him [LAUGH], okay, and sued and
they settled, okay?
So that's wrong.
That you cannot do.
But if Cheesecake Factory then sued everyone who makes cheesecakes or
factories, that would be absurd.
>> Was the food good at least?
>> It was delicious.
I went all the time.
>> [LAUGH] >> You know why it was delicious?
Cuz they copied the Cheesecake Factory.
>> Right.
>> [LAUGH]