A pair of Italians can sell clothes under the Steve Jobs brand

A truly absurd case involving intellectual property, trademarks and the name Steve Jobs emerged at the very end of last year. It concerns two Italian businessmen who decided in 2012 to start a company engaged in the production of clothing. Both were obviously big fans of Apple, and after finding out that Apple didn't hold a trademark in the name of its founder, they decided to take advantage of it. The Italian company Steve Jobs was born and was preparing to launch several lines of clothing with the name of one of the founders of Apple, as well as one of the most important personalities of the technological world.

Logically, Apple didn't like that, so their team of lawyers began to defend against this move. The Italian company Steve Jobs, or its two founders, challenged at the European Intellectual Property Office. There, they demanded that the "Steve Jobs" trademark be revoked from the two Italians based on several justifications presented. A two-year court battle started, which was concluded in 2014, but we learned the first information about it only a few days ago.

Apple contested the alleged misuse of Steve Jobs' name, as well as the bitten motif in the Italian company's logo, which is said to be suspiciously inspired by Apple's bitten apple. The European Office for the Protection of Intellectual Property swept Apple's objections off the table, and the whole case was resolved in 2014 by preserving the trademark for the Italians. The entrepreneurs waited until the end of last December to publish this whole case, because they had the trademark registered all over the world. Only then did they decide to go out with the whole story.

The final global establishment of the brand as such took place a few days ago. According to the entrepreneurs, in its legal campaign, Apple focused primarily on the alleged misuse of the logo design, which, paradoxically, was the reason for their failure. The European authority did not find a similarity between a bitten apple and a bitten letter, because the bitten letter "J" does not make any sense. You cannot bite into the letter and therefore it is not a matter of copying an idea, or Apple logos. With this ruling, Italian businessmen can happily go to work. They currently sell clothes, bags and other accessories with the Steve Jobs name, but they plan to enter the electronics segment as well. They say they have some very innovative ideas in store that they have been working on for the past few years.

Source: 9to5mac