Apple Inc. is not at all sanguine
about New York City's efforts to go green, at least when it comes to
the logo the city is trying to trademark. Cupertino, CA-based Apple
Inc. has filed a challenge against a federal trademark registration
effort by GreeNYC,
saying the logo (see below) the nonprofit is trying to trademark is too
similar to Apple's own logo, which has been in use since 1977.
 Apple Inc.'s logo |  The GreeNYC logo |
|---|
The International Business Times reported
that GreeNYC's position is that the infinity apple symbol and the
group's environmental approach were unique, a key word in the area of
registered trademarks, and that there was no infringement.
There
are many and sundry apple elements in logos for just as many and sundry
businesses throughout the U.S., some of which operate and compete on a
national level, and many more which compete and operate on a local or
regional level. One of the testing areas for trademarks is often
whether or not the businesses compete in the same market, and whether
or not a logo could cause confusion in the marketplace.
Apple
could have a tough challenge on its hands for that test, and the
differences in the logos themselves could be an issue. While both the
GreeNYC and Apple Inc. logos share a single leaf element, which point
in different directions, differences between the two include the
infinity element, the bite, and the stem.
On the other end of
the spectrum is the tourism company in Vietnam featured in the photo
below. That company, whose name this reporter was not able to find
during a trip to Vietnam in 2002, was all over the roads of central and
northern Vietnam, and all their vans and tourist busses featured Apple
Computer's (as Apple Inc. was known then) original six-colored rainbow
logo. In any event, that was a clear case of trademark infringement,
but in a country where protection for those trademarks was (and is)
largely nonexistent.
