Swiss launch of Watch delayed due to the word apple

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Apple Inc. of the U.S. is forced to delay the launch of Watch in Switzerland over the word apple.

Leonard Timepieces holds the trademark on the word apple regarding watches and jewelry until December 5th.
Apple either has to license the word apple for it's newly launching watch or wait until the trademark expires.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/04/appl ... and-issue/

Yes you can trademark names and words for certain product categories, if you didn't already know that.

I'm against this trademark law, in the same way I'm against trademarking a prefix e.g. iProduct for future proofing.

The company shouldn't matter. It doesn't matter if it is Apple or some small company. You can't make special cases, or there is no principle.

I'm only for trademark for differentiation/branding, which has to be a unique trademark at the time of registering. You could argue that you should trademark for sectors, however I don't think you should be able to trademark the word "watch" on its own which is in common usage. Neither you should be able to trademark the prefix i.

We need to limit protectionism in general.

you clearly didn't read the article...

Wrong. I made a statement on my views on Trademark law.

I am against Leonard Timepiece's ability to trademark the word 'apple' in association with watches and other jewelry.

I would be ok with them trade marking an overall term "Apple Watches" for example, but not anything with the word 'apple' in this sector.

As I made clear it doesn't matter what the company is Leonard Timepiece or Apple Computers, protectionism like this is bad.

The product is iWatch. Apple is just the company that makes it.

your point would be meaningful if Apple didn't do the same thing themselves

What part of my post do you not understand? I criticized both of them. I think it is plain and clear.

Actually is not the fault of the companies for doing what companies do naturally. It is the fault of the jurisdiction that allow this protectionist law to pass, which is against real competition.

I'm not a part of any fanboy debate, on the contrary.

so you want to have one company supplying poor quality goods at sky high prices? regulation is necessary to combat monopolies, dogwhistling about the free market isn't a solution.

What??? That is not what I'm saying at all. I don't know why you are having trouble understanding my posts. are you pulling my leg?

Trademark has nothing to do with regulation. How does limiting trademark and patent system to bare essentials help create more monopolies than we already have, or raise the prices? Think about it a for a minute...

I'm simply in favour of competition.

I'm guessing this is about some engineers poking fun at Cupertino; Apple is known for patenting & trademarking technologies, products and interfaces that either already exist, aren't currently feasible or that they never plan to build in the first place. Not to mention how often they rename completely ordinary stuff; "AirPort, iPod (was supposed to be a portable HDD), iSight, AirPlay (DLNA minus compatibility), I could go on for hours...

All decent sized companies patent, trademark, and copyright stuff they don't plan to use, or is current unfeasible.
This done to protect themselves from new entrants and markets.

Big Oil has been going crazy with patenting and copyrighting green technologies to prevent green technologies from taking off until Big Oil is ready to move on.
They hold most of the alternative and green energy patents and copyrights, they also have been forthright with suing anyone who might be a threat.

Samsung hold one of the biggest patent and copyright portfolios in the world, because they feared American and European companies would put them out of business.
Does Samsung plan actually build have the stuff they have in their portfolio? No, they just save for when they need to prevent new competition from taking hold.

Hell Android OEMs pay Microsoft billions a year in patent royalties regarding smartphones, in order to prevent Microsoft from seeking an injunction against them.
Though Samsung is refusing to honor the contract they signed with Microsoft over it.

Oracle successfully sued Google over Android claiming Android uses their software patents and software languages without their approval.
Google is now ordered to pay for licensing for all Android devices that are in violation and over billion dollars in damages.

Some patent holding firm sued Microsoft, Apple, Samsung etc... claiming they held the patent for voice and video wireless data transmissions, despite never building a product period.

Phillips sued Nintendo last year claiming they had the patents for motion controls and 3D movement device, asking billion in damages and injunctions against all of Nintendo's products that use motion controls.
Though Phillips never built anything using the patents.

A smart company patents and copyrights anything and everything they can feasibly think of as long as it is remotely related to what the company does, even if they don't plan to build/use it.

A stupid company only patents and copyrights what they actually plan to use and build.

This is why we can't have nice things. Smart people on a bus don't all stand on each others' toes. You have to be pretty stupid to legislate against stuff that's completely hypothetical - for all most companies know their patent war chests could be used by newcomers thus creating huge new economies of benefit to everyone. This petty BS is holding back hardware and interfaces by a decade or more. The capacitive panel on my desktop machine only looks shiny in 2015 because the litigation surrounding such things drags on. That tech has been around since the late '90s. Everyone plays patent troll even when it's totally irrelevant and the entire world looses. At least we're losing while the companies win, I suppose that must be the upside you see.

A Googler recently asked me why the hell everyone's interfaces today are comprised of a bunch of flat squares (Linux & OSX notwithstanding); it's because all the powers that be are in a Sisyphean arms race to sue one another into a whiskey barrel with suspenders when everyone could be focused on collaboratively building better systems and updating what we have. Branded 'app ecosystems' and SAAS providers incessantly infringe on one another's territory instead of simply popping up a Citrix meeting and letting everyone help one another. You're rationalizing tremendous material & economic waste.

Gonna go out on a limb and guess this is a new link to you: wtfpl

We live in a capitalist system driven by investors and consumers.
The Soviet Union on the other hand had a very strict patent system where one had to prove why they should have the patent. The state owned the patent and allowed limited improvement upon said invention.
Remember what happened? The Soviet Union fell behind technology wise as there was no incentive for innovation and invention, because they couldn't make large profits and it was too hard to get patents.
The Soviet Union stagnated for two decades before heading into a severe decline before the country collapsed.

The EU, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and most other countries have stricter patent laws as in most cases you need to show actual usage and intent to produce to get and kept your patent.

The U.S. on the other hand has a more lax patent system than the rest of the world, you just need to show via the application and diagram how said idea works.
The USPTO has an avenue you take to disputes patents.
You can also take it to federal court... Though if you're smart you file and have the first trial in Eastern Texas District (most patent suits are filed here)!
Said district will normally rule in the favor of the patent holder with minimal evidence...
It's literally leagues harder to win in any other federal court district.

With that said the United States of America makes most of the advancements in every part of life, while having the most advanced and biggest economy in world by far compared to any other individual country.

Oh if you ever do business in China, they have no regards for IP and patent protection, they literally rip, everyone off like clockwork.

As for Operating Systems, the majority of the buyers and users want the most simplistic and easy to use UI possible that requires the least amount of thought and clicks to use.
This is why we are reduced to flat squarish designs.

Everytime the UIs try to take a leap forward, businesses and consumers a like scream bloody murder and refuse to update and by new products.
Just look at the huge outcry windows XP, 8, 8.1 received. Look at all the hate 10 is getting for changing too much.
OS X received tons of hate when it was unveiled and launched in 2000, just over the UI.
Hell people were up in arms over how much the UI changed in Yosemite...
People are still raging strong on all the changes Andrioid 5.0 did to the UI, they still haven't made their peace with the iOS 7 changes either.

If consumers and businesses were demanding the advancements in UIs and other technologies, they'd be here already.
Case in point most businesses and people still use Internet Explorer as their main browser (it still holds 60%+ global market share), forcing Microsoft to include a Window 10 version of IE to appease them (mainly businesses).

FYI: I'm all for patent reform in the U.S., but it is being blocked by GOP members in the House.
I'm also a realist and fair...

Really dude I was just pointing out that Switzerland might be waxing ironic about this bonkers culture of litigation and thought-ownership. As a 'prosumer' I don't demand anything, I merely whine about vaporware and build things. As such I seriously do not appreciate armies of lawyers limiting the scope of what my community can build. Me-first oneupmanship legal battles create vaporware, aborting many useful things with which I could save loads of money.

tl;dr. Nationalism is dangerous. The U.S. in no way serves as the penultimate capital of scientific and engineering advancement. Drag the Soviets through the mud all you want, we never could have built Curiousity without Lunokhod. Despite the 'kirf war' going on between the U.S. and China, Chinese companies routinely come up with better ways to make the most of all that humdrum software full of flat rectangles. Case in point: Xiaomi's multi-OS bootloader/recovery images, Huawei's tremendous expansion and of course every third thing about Alibaba.

You know Xiaomi, Huawei, and Alibaba are also deep in litigation with their Chinese competition and being sued by their Western and Asian counterparts, especially for infringing on IPs and producing copycat products.

Those 3 companies are just as bad at producing UIs as the rest (Yes I've seen how unimpressive they are).
Those 3 companies are also not able to do business outside of China due to security reasons.

Here's hoping Windows 10 comes out with a decent UI (Though I actually like 8.1)

xenocity pretty summed up nicely why this legislation is bad. Yet you are right you can't really blame the companies. You need to blame the jurisdictions and their governments for pandering to it.

This is why anti-trust is just backpedaling.