<story><title>Apple takes legal action against small company with pear logo</title><url>https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/apple-legal-action-pear-logo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghastmaster</author><text>It is definitely not a perfect system. The problem is society in general accepts this behavior. It is an absurd claim on its face. They should face social pressure for this behavior. The only thing that I think could make our various systems better is to change what we accept; outside of those systems. The media we are sold and consume should reflect what is important to us. If cases like this were blasted across the twitter verse and people actually cared, it would stop once the spending decreases following the exposure. We are seeing that in other arenas.&lt;p&gt;I remember reading about a culture in east asia or the pacific where farmers did not have written contracts and usually had very little problems. Everyone knew what was expected and fell in line. If a farmer were to break with the norm, I am sure it would have resulted in them being ostracized.&lt;p&gt;I hope one day we expect more from each other, and expect more from ourselves.</text></item><item><author>JSavageOne</author><text>&amp;gt; Our lawyer let us know that they had no strong grounds against us, but would drain us in a legal battle we could never afford.&lt;p&gt;This is a clear failure of our justice system.</text></item><item><author>breue</author><text>I actually had something somewhat similar happen to me, but with Twitter.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;twitter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;twitter&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;86851616.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;86851616.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was working on a project called Scoper, which let you do video streaming. It had done fairly well at SXSW, and we had a decent amount of users. Just before we thought we were gonna be awarded a trademark for the name, we got a not so friendly letter from Twitter&amp;#x27;s counsel at Fenwick and West, telling us we were infringing on their &amp;quot;Periscope&amp;quot; brand, and listing some pretty clear demands. We never really thought of our app as a competitor to Periscope.&lt;p&gt;Our lawyer let us know that they had no strong grounds against us, but would drain us in a legal battle we could never afford. We told Twitter we knew they had weak grounds and that the case would just drag on, and we would rather save both sides money, if they would just buy us out.&lt;p&gt;They gave us a super low amount of money to drop the trademark application, transfer the domain, all brand related stuff, and remove our app from the App Store. It was kinda depressing, but it could have been a worse outcome.&lt;p&gt;To be fair, this wasn&amp;#x27;t outrageous like this pear logo case, but it was just a feeling of being bullied and knowing you don&amp;#x27;t stand a chance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>felipelemos</author><text>&amp;gt; It is definitely not a perfect system. The problem is society in general accepts this behavior.&lt;p&gt;The problem is the justice system accept this behaviour. We can not and should not depends on the public opinion in general to determine injustices to happen. That&amp;#x27;s why we have a justice system after all.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple takes legal action against small company with pear logo</title><url>https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/apple-legal-action-pear-logo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghastmaster</author><text>It is definitely not a perfect system. The problem is society in general accepts this behavior. It is an absurd claim on its face. They should face social pressure for this behavior. The only thing that I think could make our various systems better is to change what we accept; outside of those systems. The media we are sold and consume should reflect what is important to us. If cases like this were blasted across the twitter verse and people actually cared, it would stop once the spending decreases following the exposure. We are seeing that in other arenas.&lt;p&gt;I remember reading about a culture in east asia or the pacific where farmers did not have written contracts and usually had very little problems. Everyone knew what was expected and fell in line. If a farmer were to break with the norm, I am sure it would have resulted in them being ostracized.&lt;p&gt;I hope one day we expect more from each other, and expect more from ourselves.</text></item><item><author>JSavageOne</author><text>&amp;gt; Our lawyer let us know that they had no strong grounds against us, but would drain us in a legal battle we could never afford.&lt;p&gt;This is a clear failure of our justice system.</text></item><item><author>breue</author><text>I actually had something somewhat similar happen to me, but with Twitter.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;twitter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;twitter&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;86851616.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;breue.com&amp;#x2F;86851616.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was working on a project called Scoper, which let you do video streaming. It had done fairly well at SXSW, and we had a decent amount of users. Just before we thought we were gonna be awarded a trademark for the name, we got a not so friendly letter from Twitter&amp;#x27;s counsel at Fenwick and West, telling us we were infringing on their &amp;quot;Periscope&amp;quot; brand, and listing some pretty clear demands. We never really thought of our app as a competitor to Periscope.&lt;p&gt;Our lawyer let us know that they had no strong grounds against us, but would drain us in a legal battle we could never afford. We told Twitter we knew they had weak grounds and that the case would just drag on, and we would rather save both sides money, if they would just buy us out.&lt;p&gt;They gave us a super low amount of money to drop the trademark application, transfer the domain, all brand related stuff, and remove our app from the App Store. It was kinda depressing, but it could have been a worse outcome.&lt;p&gt;To be fair, this wasn&amp;#x27;t outrageous like this pear logo case, but it was just a feeling of being bullied and knowing you don&amp;#x27;t stand a chance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kunai</author><text>At the core of the problem is that society is not allowed to not accept this behavior. The systems by which Apple et al abuse their positions to harm small businesses and &amp;quot;the little&amp;quot; guy are literally enshrined in our legal and administrative code. Government decisions of the last 30 years, often regardless of party, have resulted in the single largest consolidation of corporate power under six umbrellas (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix) in Silicon Valley history.&lt;p&gt;Extraordinarily lax antitrust laws (in both Republican and Democratic administrations, you&amp;#x27;d expect the Dems to be tougher on this but follow the money trail and it&amp;#x27;s simple to see why), a general disdain for shareholder activism, and corporate culture in &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; of the aforementioned companies prioritizing the needs of advertisers over the needs of the end user.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The media we are sold and consume should reflect what is important to us. If cases like this were blasted across the twitter verse and people actually cared, it would stop&lt;p&gt;I would have agreed with you fifteen, maybe ten years ago. The point of no return has been passed. Apple and Amazon alone are worth enough combined for public opinion to matter nil in terms of their actual business practices. They could suffer millions of dollars in bad press and shareholders would continue to invest and consumers would continue to buy product. Look at TSLA as a fantastic example -- Elon consistently sticks his foot in his mouth and makes a mockery of himself but TSLA short sellers continue to lose big time.&lt;p&gt;The only solution at this point in my view is a fundamental overhaul of antitrust law and safeguards to ensure competition in cutting edge industries, and collectivization of essentials like public internet and public utilities so the profit incentive doesn&amp;#x27;t get in the way of service. We&amp;#x27;re already seeing how terrible the outcome is with the Post Office, we don&amp;#x27;t need any additional privatization in the world of tech.</text></comment>