Apple could force a 111-year-old fruit company to change its Apple logo
When it comes to discussing intellectual property laws, it's important to remember where they came from.I live in High Wycombe, a market town in the South East of England. In the nineteenth century, Wycombe was known as the centre of chair manufacturing. The chairs were initially transported by barge down the Wye and Thames Rivers to Windsor, where they were sold, and consequently became known as Windsor chairs. They were exported across the British Empire and to America, and were very popular.The chair trade in Wycombe started in a particularly cold winter, when it was too cold for the farmhands to work outdoors. The farmhands were taught how to make the round parts of the chairs by the town wheelwright (who otherwise made wheels for the carts made by the town cartwright). In recognition of this, a wheel design was cut into the backs of the chairs as a decorative device. This design became the distinguishing mark of a chair made in Wycombe.A chair factory opened in Birmingham, but found that their chairs didn't sell as well... until they started adding the wheel design into their chairs. Business was good for the Birmingham factory, until some of the Wycombe lads paid them a visit. Strong words were had, but the Birmingham factory continued making chairs with wheel designs for a few weeks, until the factory mysteriously burned down in the middle of the night.The wheel design functioned as an early trademark: it clearly and unambiguously attested the provenance of the item. Trademarks are a consumer protection mechanism: it is the buyer who needs to know the provenance of the item in the absence of a trustworthy seller.To the man on the Clapham omnibus[0], the presence or absence of the wheel design was the only attestation to the chair's origin: this trademark was a necessary innovation. However, if the gentleman from Clapham is unable to distinguish between an apple grown in Switzerland and a piece of computing machinery manufactured in China according to a design from California, one wonders whether a trademark would be of any help to him.[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus