Tech giant Apple is reportedly negotiating a settlement over a disputed trademark relating to tiny startup Prepear’s logo — a minimalist pear that Apple claims consumers confuse with its iconic minimalist Apple logo.
MacRumors reports that in August Apple attempted to oppose a trademark application by the creators of a recipe and meal-planning app called Prepear, which used a depiction of a pear fruit as its logo. Apple objected to the Pepear logo trademark claiming that it was too similar to the company’s famous apple logo.
Although the Prepear logo clearly depicts an outline of a pear, Apple claimed that the logo “consists of a minimalistic fruit design with a right-angled leaf, which readily calls to mind Apple’s famous Apple Logo and creates a similar commercial impression.”
The company behind Prepear, Super Healthy Kids, launched a petition attempting to persuade Apple to drop its opposition which Super Healthy Kids claimed targeted a small business trying to protect a logo that does not resemble Apple’s logo. The petition received over 250,000 signatures.
Although Apple has not dropped its opposition a resolution to the dispute may come soon as filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board last week have requested that the trial proceedings be suspended for 30 days as the “parties are actively engaged in negotiations for the settlement of this matter.”
Either side is free to resume the proceedings at any time and the proceedings will automatically resume on January 23 if there is no further word from the two parties. If a settlement is not reached, the dispute could drag on for some time with initial pretrial disclosures set to begin in March and main trial briefs beginning in October. A request for an oral hearing would not come until December 2021.
Breitbart News recently reported that last year Apple sued the security start-up company Corellium, accusing the company of violating copyright law by offering researchers access to “virtual” iPhones that could be used to find bugs in iOS products. A federal judge in Florida has now tossed Apple’s copyright complaint.
The decision is a major victory for Corellium. Apple also accused the start-up of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for allegedly bypassing iPhone security measures to create the iPhone emulator. This complaint has yet to be addressed by the court.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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