The company has opposed singer-songwriters, school districts and food blogs for trying to trademark names or logos featuring an apple or pineapple.
Ryan Mac and Kellen Browning were involved.
Ryan Mac was from Los Angeles and Kellen Browning was from San Francisco.
The logo for the business of a neon green and pink apple was designed by the founder of a sex-and-life coaching blog.
After applying to register the logo, Ms. St. John received an unpleasant surprise. Her request was challenged by Apple.
The lawyers for Apple argued that the logo of Ms. St. John was likely to tarnish the company's reputation.
Ms. St. John, a human resources professional in Arizona, was crestfallen. Without the money to hire a lawyer, she decided not to respond to Apple's challenge. It paved the way for a default judgment in favor of the electronics giant.
Ms. St. John said that she was not making money off of it.
In recent years, Apple has gone after dozens of entrepreneurs, small businesses and corporations for applying to trademark names with the word "apple" or logos of fruit. Apple, the world's most valuable public company, worth $2.6 trillion, filed 215 trademark oppositions to defend its logo, name or product titles over the course of last year. That's more than the estimated 136 trademark oppositions that Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google collectively filed in the same period.
The high rate is due to Apple being a more common word than corporate names. Many people in China have tried to copy Apple's name and logo in order to make a buck.
Apple targets entities that are infinitesimal in size and have nothing to do with tech. It wants to see logos that involve other fruits, like oranges and pears.
The hit card game Apples to Apples is one of the things that have been included in its quarries. An orange logo used by a curbside pickup start-up was objected to by Apple. It settled a dispute with a meal planning app called Prepear after the app's creator agreed to change a leaf on its logo to make it look less like Apple.
The scale of the company's campaign is excessive and unnecessary to protect the public from confusion.
The Energy Department, Super Healthy Kids, and the Patent and Trademark Office all declined to comment. Requests for comment were not responded to.
If there are concerns with new trademark applications, Apple must file oppositions with the Patent and Trademark Office.
When we see applications that are too broad or confusing, our first step is always to reach out and try to resolve these quickly and amicably.
Apple files trademark oppositions against entities that have received approval from the Patent and Trademark Office. The company has argued that Apple marks are so famous and instantly recognizable that other trademarks will weaken the strength of its brand or cause the ordinary consumer to believe that the application is related to it.
Some of the people targeted said they could not show the challenges were frivolous because they did not have the resources to fight the company in front of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. About 17 percent of the entities that Apple or its subsidiary Beats Electronics opposed withdrew their trademark applications. According to data from the Tech Transparency Project, another 127 individuals or organizations did not reply to challenges.
When Apple objected to the trademark of her stage name, Franki Pineapple, she was shocked. Apple acknowledged that an apple and pineapple were different, but said they were the same as a commercial impression.
Ms. Carlisi said that it was not an apple.
The company known as Apple Computer was not always litigious. In 1989 it filed nine trademark oppositions, peaking at nine in 2000. One of the oppositions was to an electronics retailer that sold computer parts under the name Pineapple.
Apple was a defendant in trademark cases in those years. In 1978, Apple Corps, the holding company founded by the Beatles, sued Apple Computer, the first in a series of legal disputes between the two companies. In 2007, the two Apples agreed to give the Silicon Valley company all of the trademarks related to Apple.
By then, Apple had filed dozens of trademark oppositions annually.
Barton Beebe, a New York University Law School professor, said that Apple's legal team most likely wanted to prevent the brand's dilution as it grew. The legal argument in intellectual property theory is not that someone would be confused by two different trademarks, but that a new one would reduce the value of a household logo or name.
The argument to judges is thatlution is death by a thousand cuts.
Apple created a template for challenging trademark applications, according to a law professor. In a comparison of its responses to two applicants, it used cookie-cutter opposition language.
The Appleton Area School District has a logo of three interlocked apples. Big Apple Curry is a New York City Indian cooking blog. The company's brand value is estimated by Forbes to be $206 billion.
Representatives for the school district and Big Apple Curry did not comment.
There is a cost efficiency in going after multiple people with the same argument. She said that Apple had been litigious about intellectual property.
Sometimes Apple will ask the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board for extensions to file against a new trademark and then contact that business so it alters its application. When Apple submitted paperwork to ask for more time to potentially challenge her trademark application in 2020, it was devastating. She narrowed her request after talking to Apple's lawyers.
Last year, Apple objected to Ms. Brown's attempt to trademark her show, "Talk About Apples." The company argued that people could confuse her with its service.
Ms. Brown said that it was an African American witch doctor talking about fictional fantasy and monsters and ghouls.
Apple Urgent Care, which runs clinics in California'sRiverside County, was the subject of a trademark application in 2019. Apple objected because his logo included an apple with a piece missing and anangled-detached leaf.
Apple's case is ridiculous because it is not a medical care provider. He dropped his application because he didn't have the money to test that theory.
He said that he was a small company.
Ms. Carlisi won a concession after she responded to Apple. The company agreed to stop pursuing its opposition if she included a caveat on her trademark application stating that Franki Pineapple was not her real fruit.
Ms. Carlisi got some inspiration from the legal increase. She said her battle with Apple inspired her debut single, which is about sticking it to the man.
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