This is a trademark dispute - and there is one simple rule in International trademarks. If you stop defending your trademark every time, then you lose it.
No-one at apple seriously thinks a polish supermarket is going to trade on the apple brand. But because it's close enough, they must sue. Otherwise the polish laptop maker who releases pomme d'terre range will be able to get in.
If you don't beleve me, paint a red triangle outside your stall in Dar es salaam and see how fast the nabisco lawyers hit you.
It's life.
What is bad is there is not a word of damage control from Apple - with Jobs gone they no longer get the benefit of the doubt - and so IMO should explain every piece of evil / seeming evil they do very clearly. Just not in their DNA though.
"If you stop defending your trademark every time, then you lose it.."
But is suing really the only way to defend a trademark? If what you say is true, why don't we see a lot more of these? It can't be that hard to come up with similar "trade mark infringements" that nobody cares about? Or??
Yes. After a trademark has been granted, suing is the way you defend your trademark. Also, there have been more of these...a lot more. Perhaps you remember Apple suing NYC over their NYC Green apple logo or the Victoria School of Business and Technology over their apple-shaped logo or Woolworths Limited over their logo? ...and those are just the ones conveniently listed on the list of trademark litigation from this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#Trademark...
We are only getting second- and third-hand reports, but the typical opener is to send a letter to the offender telling them to stop. Saying hello with a lawsuit gets expensive.
I can see why they don't - because it would likely make no difference at all.
As you say, the rules on trademark protection are crystal clear and understood by anyone who takes 30 seconds to read up on them.
Any journalists running this sort of story are either unprofessional enough not to do the necessary research (and would likely not bother connecting the story to a press release) or, more likely, understand exactly what's happening but are just click whoring (in which case they'll just ignore it).
In either case though I don't see a press release from Apple would do anything - a lazy journalist won't care and nor will one just looking for the sensationalist story.
Because news outlets are not peoples only source if news.
Timcook.blog.apple.com would have been quoted thirty seconds after the OP got put up - but it does not exist.
I can only surmise that apple does not reply directly because that sort of thing is not how apple works. Perhaps they should change.
Why didn't they dispute the trademark during the opposition period. Unless Polish law doesn't have opposiTion procedure, this doesn't sound like a defensive move.
No-one at apple seriously thinks a polish supermarket is going to trade on the apple brand. But because it's close enough, they must sue. Otherwise the polish laptop maker who releases pomme d'terre range will be able to get in.
If you don't beleve me, paint a red triangle outside your stall in Dar es salaam and see how fast the nabisco lawyers hit you.
It's life.
What is bad is there is not a word of damage control from Apple - with Jobs gone they no longer get the benefit of the doubt - and so IMO should explain every piece of evil / seeming evil they do very clearly. Just not in their DNA though.