Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and an apple and apple.

There is a lot of heat and interest around a small Victoria business and technology school and their battle with Apple over the school’s logo.

I’m going to skip the expected comparisons between the two logos and go with their window as the point here:

Looking at this sign quickly, and I have since I used to live close to there and have been in that plaza several times, I thought it was a computer store that sold Macs. I figured with the apple and the software logos that it wasn’t a school, but a store. Sure on closer inspection I saw the difference, but think about the reasons and rational a company uses to defend its mark in court:

If Apple were to proceed with its case against VSBT, it would need to prove the school’s logo presented the possibility for confusion in the marketplace rather than simply establish that the marks look similar to each other.

"It’s not so much whether it looks like the other guy’s mark, as much as it is using it with something identified with the other person," said media lawyer David Sutherland, who noted that both Apple and VSBT are involved in the field of computers. From the AppleInsider

Based on that litmus test, as a consumer, I was “confused” by their logo. This doesn’t mean I agree with Apple’s heavy-handed tactics. Chatting with Roland Tanglao and Dave Olson both got my point there, but Dave brought up that Apple didn’t have to be a thug about this. There are more grown-up ways to handle this.

Apple, really think about this. Now you have a PR-debacle to deal with. The news has gone national in Canada and going to go international before you know it. The school uses your freakin’ machines for Pete’s sake! Now instead of being able to say you helped out the company with some resources to redesign the logo (as Dave suggested), you have to deal with people thinking you’re just another big, thuggish company.

At the end of the day, Apple, I bet you’re going to have to do more to come out looking good than you would have had to if you had just talked to them without C&D letters.

More coverage: Globe & Mail, Techvibes, VSBT

Tagged as: Apple, copyright, logos, trademark infringment, Victoria School of Business and Technology, VSBT