Now in its twelfth year, Class 46 is dedicated to European trade mark law and practice. This weblog is written by a team of enthusiasts who want to spread the word and share their thoughts with others.
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Germany: Apple takes another bite ...
Even in view of the current patent wars going on with e.g. Samsung, Apple apparently still has some time left to deal with trade mark matters.
According to several German newspaper articles (e.g. here and here (with video coverage!)) the current object of the giant's wrath is, believe it or not, a small cafe named "Apfelkind" located in the southern parts of Bonn, Germany.
The owner of the cafe designed the logo "Apfelkind" and liked it so much that she filed for a respective trademark in classes 16, 18, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 35, 42, 43 (which, according to the view of this Class 46 member, seems a rather large list of goods/services for running a cafe...).
Accordingly all of the plates, mugs etc. in her cafe as well as bags (maybe already also some other merchandising articles) and the like are branded with this design. Allegedly the owner came up with the name "Apfelkind" (i.e. "child of the apple") and the logo since her landlord owns an apple orchard with 4000 trees and the cafe should be especially suited for people (mothers) with (small) childrens.
Apparently the Cupertino based company did not like this use of a "highly similar" sign and filed an opposition against the trademark "Apfelkind". In order to solve this conflict amicably, Apple seems to have asked the cafe owner to delete at least classes 16, 18, 28 and 35.
According to the newspaper sources, however, the owner of the cafe did not accept this offer and seems to prefer a decision of the German trade mark authorities on the case. The fact, that this case had been published in several German newspapers has lead to a large moral support for the cafe owner and mostly incomprehension for Apple's way of acting in this case.
However, also an Islandic cafe owner showed up in the wake of the coverage and now claims that the owner of the "Apfelkind" cafe in fact stole their concept of a children friendly cafe and even the logo (for those who understand Islandic, the link is here...).
It will be interesting to have the German authorities to decide in this case keeping in mind the high degree of brand awareness of Apple's trade marks with the consumers...
Tags: Germany, well known trade mark, similarity,
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