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Apfelkind and Apple: Agreement in sight?

After 14 months it seems as if the small family cafe in Bonn, Germany finally
can stick to their logo without having to fear the wrath of the computer
and smartphone primus Apple. In October 2011, the owner of the small café
in Bonn got a not-so-friendly letter from Apple’s attorneys at law.

Subject of the letter: The violation of Apple’s most-important trademark. The bitten-Apple logo.

While Apfelkind’s logo shows a complete apple with a kid’s head inside (which represents the name of the café as sujet) and obviously has little to nothing to do with Apple’s bitten apple logo, the computer designer from Cupertino seems to have felt threatened from the small family café and used some of it’s weapons to force Apfelkind to redesign their logo.

Afelkind however refused to do so as the redesign would have caused costs for the café in a height where the service would have been endangered. So the owner of the café took the hard way and stood against Apple’s concerns about their logo.

For now, Apple does not want to state any of their actions, neither about the contradiction at the European Patent Office in Munich nor to the confrontation with Apfelkind whose logo is far from similar to Apples logo.

Andreas Lubbenberger, trademark attorney frm berlin says that Apfelkind’s logo has nothing to do with Apple’s logo and the fact that the apple with the kid’s face on it is never standing alone from the “apfelkind” scriptlogo grants Apfelkind some better chances to win this “fight”.

For now the lawsuit fills a complete folder at Apfelkind and it stops her from evoluting the café further as sold toys and goodies should not wear Apfelkind’s logo, as the trademark attorney suggested.

So far it’s probably a good sign that Apfelkind may keep the logo and finally can bring out it’s goodies with the logo imprinted on them.

In case the logo war should end negatively for Apfelkind, the owner has already set up a plan B: The logo will then be redesigned as a cherry logo with the kids’ faces on them.

However I smell another trademark war coming up. Namely with Pacha club whose double cherry logo is renowned…


February 7, 2013 Netspark - 1594 posts - Member since: May 9th, 2011 2 Comments »

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2 Responses to this entry

  • Tari says:

    Hey there. Nice article but I have to give some remarks:

    Apple has not filed its oppositions with the European Patent Office (which is only responsible for patents and has nothing to do with trademarks) but with the German Patent and Trademark Office where the “apfelkind”-trademark has been registered for Germany and the Office for Harmonization of the Internal Market where the trademark has been registered for the EU.

    According to the latest database news, the oppisitions are still pending while apple and apfelkind are trying to find a non-official solution.

    However, as you said, they have plan B, i.e. to change the logo to “kirschenkind”. But in this case, they already have a REGISTERED trademark as no one has filed an opposition within the prescribed period. Therefore, this trademark is quite safe. And by the way, the GPTO database does not find any trademarks “pacha club”.

    Hope that I could make things a bit clearer for those who are not familiar with IP rights.

    Posted on February 14th, 2013 at 23:29 Reply | Quote
  • Avatar photo Netspark says:

    Good point there! Well I am not too familiar with the patent and trademark system. All I know is that Pacha Club always puts an “®” behind their logo (however it’s behind the “PACHA” and not besides the cherry logo. So I wonder what the “®” applies to and I also wonder if a new “kirschenkind”-logo could possibly interfere with “Pacha’s” interests in their logo anyways.

    As already said, I am not too familiar with the patents and trademark system and you seem to be at the source, so I guess, you know for sure what you’re talking about. :)
    By time I might want to ask some questions about this and that related to patents and trademarks.

    Oh and by the way: Welcome to this blog! Hope it is somewhat entertaining for you and maybe also informative!

    Posted on February 15th, 2013 at 12:37 Reply | Quote

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