The Court of the European Court of Justice rejected the appeal with which Apple had opposed the decision of the EUipo which in 2018 had invalidated all rights on the intellectual property of the well-known slogan Think Differentwhich Apple used extensively for advertisements between 1997 and 2002. The court, in other words, said legitimizes the forfeiture of rights to the slogan established by the European patent office, the EUipo.
The “word sign” Think Different, to use the definition of the Court, was registered by Apple in 1997, 1998 and 2005 as a trademark of the European Union, but in 2016 Swatch had presented to theEuipo request for revocation of the slogan, noting that it had never been used during the previous five years. Two years later the Community Patent Office accepted the Swiss manufacturer’s request, establishing that Think Different was no longer with Apple as of October 14, 2016.
To subvert the decision, Apple would have had to prove the non-existence of Swatch’s thesis, thus proving that between 2011 and 2016 he had used the slogan at least once. In Cupertino we were tempted until January last year, when the appeal to the Court of the European Court of Justice was finalized. That now, judging the evidence provided by Apple to be inconsistent, has issued a ruling in the opposite direction to that advocated by Apple.
There’s no good blood between Apple and Swatch, so to speak. The two companies have long battled in court over slogans related issues, such as the One More Thing used for years by Steve Jobs at the end of the keynotes generally before announcing the most important news of the event. But the issue that has kept corporate lawyers busy the longest is the one related to Tick ​​Different used by Swatch to promote Bellamy, the analog watch with NFC of 2015 (pictured above), in Apple’s opinion too similar to its historic slogan.
On which, however, according to EUipo, Apple could no longer invoke any rights.
