Apple & Prepear App Are Negotiating Settlement Over ‘Similar’ Fruit Logo Design
Image via Russell Monson (co-founder of Prepear) / Change.org
Months after Apple disputed a trademark attempt by meal-planning app Prepear for a pear-shaped logo, the plot is starting to unpeel. The two companies are now hoping to find middleground and reach a settlement.
Apple claimed in August that the symbol submitted by the app, owned by family meal-planning platform Super Healthy Kids, “readily calls to mind Apple’s famous Apple logo” due to both emblems depicting a “minimalistic fruit design with a right-angled leaf.”
The app’s co-founder Russell Monson then started a Change.org petition asking for supporters to help “Save the Pear from Apple!”
Monson reasoned that as a “very small business with only five team members,” it cannot handle being “legally attacked by one of the largest companies in the world, even when we have clearly done nothing wrong.” He stressed that the Prepear logo is an “obviously pear-shaped logo.”
“Our fight for the right of all small business owners to be able to develop their own logo without fear of frivolous litigation has already cost us many thousands of dollars and the very saddening layoff of one of our team members,” he added.
Since then, the two companies have been working out of court towards a settlement, MacRumors has discovered.
An update in the Trial and Appeal board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveals that the two companies “are actively engaged in negotiations for the settlement of this matter.”
If the two parties cannot come to an agreement, proceedings will automatically restart on 23 January 2021. Pretrial will start in March, with main trial briefs expected to take place in October. And there’s a chance that this will be a long-drawn-out battle, because there could also be a potential request for an oral hearing in December 2021.
[via iDownloadBlog and MacRumors, cover image via Russell Monson (co-founder of Prepear) / Change.org]
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