Bloomberg reports that a London Judge Iain Purvis has ruled in favor of Swatch Group AG permitting it to use Apple founder’s cue phrase “one more thing”. At many events, Apple’s former CEO, Steve Jobs announced new products with his signature cue phrase.
Swatch Group AG is a Swiss luxury watches and jewelry manufacturer but it has an inexplicable trademark war with Apple. In 2015, Swatch prevented Apple from branding its smartphone “iWatch”. Later the Swiss manufacturer registered “Tick Different” phrasing as opposed to the Cupertino tech giant’s “Think Different” slogan.
Swatch is granted “one more thing” cue despite Apple’s argument of malicious intent
The Cupertino tech giant argued that Swatch intends to “troll” the company when it wanted to register Steve Jobs’ cue.
Jobs’ successor Tim Cook revived Job’s ‘One more thing’ line in 2015 specifically for the launch of the Apple Watch. The company argued that Swatch then sought to parody Apple when it attempted to register the phrase, with its lawyers saying the move was in “bad faith.”
“I use the word ‘parody’ there to encompass the kind of trolling behavior, the malicious bad faith use of the mark,” Apple’s lawphraseyer Jaani Riordan said, according to the ruling.
However, Judge Purvis was of a different opinion and he ruled in favor of Swatch. The report writes:
But Judge Purvis said Apple was unable to come up with examples of any potentially concerning parodies.
Swatch’s attempt to register the phrase might have been an attempt to “annoy” Apple, Judge Iain Purvis said in his ruling, but Apple can’t block it from doing so. Purvis said in his ruling that the phrase probably originated with the fictional TV detective Columbo.
The iPhone maker is particularly possessive about its branding. Recently, it settled a logo trademark suit with a food startup company ‘Prepear’. The tech giant filed a suit against Prepear over the resemblance of its logo with Apple’s. But the case was settled after the Canadian company made a slight design change.
