Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward and Merpel. E-mail the Kats here!

The team is joined by GuestKats Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot, Jocelyn Bosse, Alessandro Cerri, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Marcel Pemsel and Anna Maria Stein.

SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Rose Hughes (PatKat) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).

InternKats: Asude Sena Moya and Söğüt Atilla.
Home / Australia / trade mark infringement / United Kingdom / Looking for a new suit? Try Woolworths

Looking for a new suit? Try Woolworths

- , ,
Apple has attacked the validity of Woolworth's trade mark application in Australia arguing that their green stylized W-shaped apple is too similar to Apple's own corporate logo. In 2008 Australia's largest supermarket chain rebranded its services, introducing the new green apple aimed at emphasizing Woolworth's commitment to fresh produce. It is not Woolworth's use of this trade mark on general produce that concerns Apple. Given Woolworth's blanket trade mark application, Apple is allegedly concerned that Woolworths, in competition with Apple's iProducts, will place the trade mark on its own-brand electronic equipment. As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, Apple's complaint, lodged with IP Australia (the supervising intellectual property body), contended that Woolworths trade mark should be rejected on the grounds that consumers would be confused between the two brands.

As reported by the Telegraph, a spokesperson for Woolworths stated that the green 'W' is meant to represent freshness of produce rather than specifically representing an apple. If it looks like an apple, smells like an apple, and by all accounts is an apple, this IPKat isn't sure how one gets to state it only depicts 'freshness'. This arguement is especially tenuous if one then decides to affix the 'fresh' logo on to electronics, something that Woolworths has apparently not ruled out.

[Final paragraph of original posting deleted]
Looking for a new suit? Try Woolworths Looking for a new suit? Try Woolworths Reviewed by Annsley Merelle Ward on Tuesday, October 06, 2009 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. KenTuesday, 6 October 2009 at 23:13:00 GMT+1

    I think the AmeriKat's link to the details of Woolworth's Australian TM application may not work for everyone - for those interested in the details, you will have to point your browser to:

    http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/atmoss/falcon.application_start

    and click the "Enter as Guest" link. From there, enter 1258297 in the "TM Number List" box at the bottom.

    Cheers,

    Ken

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousWednesday, 7 October 2009 at 10:55:00 GMT+1

    Well, yes. And when I shop for electronics, the freshness of the produce is something of great importance to me...

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.