Apple in action against Australian department store over logo similarity

Apple has filed a complaint against Australian department store Woolworths. According to Apple, the department store’s new logo is too similar to theirs, but Woolworths disagrees, leaving the trademark office to decide.

According to Woolworths, the new logo, unveiled a year ago, is a stylized ‘W’. However, Apple thinks it looks way too much like the Apple logo, so reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Apple will now take the dispute to IP Australia, the government’s trademark adjudicator. If the trademark office agrees with Apple, Woolworths will have to take a different logo.

What worries Apple most is that Woolworths has applied to use the new logo on all kinds of products, so that it can also end up on computers and music players. These are products that Apple markets, but Apple also does not approve the use of the logo on shops, because the computer company has its own shops.

According to the designer of the logo, Hans Hulsbosch, Apple takes the protection of trademarks very extreme. “With this reasoning they could take action against every greengrocer,” says HulsBosch. According to trademark attorney Trevor Choy, Apple typically tries to prevent any use of a logo that resembles an apple, but only 5 percent of these cases are fought in court. “This is usually a prelude to a settlement. I don’t think it’s going to be fought out at all, unless, of course, Woolworths decides to release computers. I don’t think Apple expects to win.”