If you think the headline is deliberately spiced up to gain your attention to this blog post, then this is certainly NOT the case. Yes! Apple is being insane enough to sue an online grocery store! Reuters is reporting that Apple is suing an online Polish grocery retailer named A.pl, which is an obvious pun to the fruit name “Apple” that happens to be their company name too. Apple has also filed a complaint with the Polish Patent Office claiming that the Polish company copied Apple’s logos on its website.
Notice: For apple fan boys it’s time to discontinue reading the post. The post contains text that may hurt your loyalties for Apple.
Being protective about patents and trademarks is acceptable but being protective so much so that suing an online grocery store that has literally nothing to do with gadgets and gizmo is ridiculous. Everyone in this world is sensible enough to understand Apple’s stance to go against any electronics supplier that was using an Apple-like branding to sell their products, but certainly going against a innocent grocery store?? It doesn’t make sense.
A Polish patent office spokesman Adam Taukert reportedly said: “Apple brand is widely recognized and the company says that A.pl, by using the name that sounds similar, is using Apple’s reputation”. That is the grocery store is using Apple branding to sell vegetables?( Do you mean that?)
With the suit filed, Apple is thinking that A.pl is using their logo to attract customers who intend to come to the website to purchase igadgets and end up buying fresh fruits and vegitables. In essence, Apple is claiming that the poor grocery store has copied its logo, which is associated with their gadgets, to sell fruits and vegetables. Yes, indeed people can be blind enough to purchase a cauliflower thinking of it as an iPad! Or they come to the website thinking of it as an Apple technology website and are allured to buy fresh fruits and so the apple products sales are dropping, or what??
I happened to view the website that was in non-English language. The fact that the website wasn’t in English and does not have a single image of gadgets on it proves that the relation (if any) is just a co-incidence.
Now for the logo. The company’s main logo isn’t infringing in the least by any angle (thank god!) But their offshoot company, fresh24, had been using a logo sometime back that has caused the suit.
To date you have played “Find the difference between pictures”; today let’s play “Find similarity”
Probably it’s not about patents and the grocery Stores. It’s more about the a.pl domain I perceive. Apple may want to acquire the domain name. Where pl is top level domain for Poland. Apple is no doubt a mastermind in technology innovation and has brought some revolutionary gadgets to the world but it is weak in this suit.
