Power of Corporate Trademark Stupidity

Sometimes it's foolish to let the lawyers out without a nanny - particularly when your company has a reputation for being unreasonably litigious. And Apple may have taken its legal fierceness a few steps too far. The company has decided to mount a legal challenge over the GreeNYC logo. That logo belongs to the City of New York and is part of a campaign to have consumers go green by lowering energy consumption.

NYC registered a trademark on the green apple with stem that doesn't have a bite taken out of it. A few months later, Apple registered a challenge. Mind you, there is no reasonably way one could confuse reducing energy consumption in New York City with the computer and consumer electronics company. If they think that's a threat, why not go after Apple Records because they're involved in music, and that at least has some connection to the iPod. Oh, wait, right - Apple Records was there first.

So Apple Inc. thinks that NYC is competition and is taking action? Let's count all the ways this is about one of the most stupid things it could have done:

1. New York City isn't some kid in Harvard writing a blog and without funds. This is an economy unto itself, with lots of wherewithal to mount a legal challenge that will rattle the teeth of Steve Jobs.


2. This has got to be an incredibly stupid PR move. The company is essentially branding itself as anti-green.


3. New York City has used the Big Apple as a slogan far earlier than the first time Steve Wozniak cobbled together his first personal computer prototype.


4. Because there are so many organizations and businesses using apples in names and logos, as the City Room blog of the New York Times points out, Apple has very possibly fallen into the dangerous ground of selectively protecting its trademark, which could provide grounds for it to lose that bit of intellectual property.


5. The city realizes the potential weakness of Apple's position, because it responded to the US Patent and Trademark office that Apple used fraud to win overly broad protection.

In other words, because it decided to get heavy-handed this particular time, Apple's grasp on its apple could slip. How valuable is a brand logo if you no longer own it?

General Mills Undertakes Stunningly Bad PR

National Public Radio ran a story about a group of people in Potsdam, NY that has held an annual bake-off for the last ten years as a fund raiser for a local food pantry. Apparently the use of the term "bake-off" got the corporate Dough Boy irritated:

This year, food manufacturing giant General Mills contacted organizers and told them it owns the word, and only the company can use it.

How incredibly stupid does corporate management have to be? Had they contacted the people and said something to the effect of, "It's our trademark and we have to defend it to keep it at all, but we applaud your efforts and, if you can credit the trademark to us, we'd be happy to let you use it?" But, no, the iron fist came down and so did a story on NPR. Want to guess how long it will take for this to hit all other media? Want to guess the PR value of being seen as opposing food pantries and charitable work? How many boycotts on local levels will start? Could a competitor ever afford to cause this much trouble and get a competitive advantage? This is such a stupid blunder that it brings into question whether management has such tin ears that they cannot be trusted to do what is in the real best interest of the company and the shareholders.

Patent Politics

I have an article in the August 2007 issue of IP Law & Business about politics, displeasure, and the US Patent & Trademark Office. I actually preferred the original first paragraph:

Business people and lawyers complaining about federal agencies? Quick, call the TV cameras—the sun rose today. But noise about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the patent community is escalating lately from complaints to serious criticism and even to allegation.

Ah, well, editing is about change. The topic is interesting, though - and given new continuation rules (which affect the entire patent application process) and proposed changes in patent law, there's a lot that CEOs and CFOs should be considering. This is not just an issue for a company's general counsel.

Chinese Amusement Park Uncannily Like Disneyland

For those in business who want to believe that the Chinese government really wants to end copyright infringement, look at this article in Hong Kong paper The Standard. On web site Japan Probe there are more pictures of characters and even a setting or two that might be suspiciously familiar. There's also a video that includes the president of the state-owned part claiming that the characters are originals, not rip-offs. Oh, and that odd little character isn't Mickey Mouse - it's a cat with really big ears. At least, that's what they say.

Whether you have sympathy for Disney or not, such a government-controlled enterprise should give any business manager second thoughts about moving any serious enterprise to China ... unless they think that their intellectual property - from product designs to methods of manufacturing and trademarks - are so unimportant that they might as well be given away.