According to the latest report, the EU General Court rejected Apple’s appeal against Swatch’s “Tick Different” slogan, saying that these objections were based on a “misreading” of the ruling, Apple’s “Think Different ” slogan “The trademark is still revoked in the region.
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Think Different is an ad launched by Apple in July 1997. One of the adverts was written by Jobs himself. Apple and Swatch have been embroiled in multiple court cases, with each company claiming the other has infringed a trademark. The longest-running one involved Swatch’s “Tick Different” series, which Apple sued in April 2017.
The Swiss Federal Administrative Court finally ruled in 2019 that Apple’s “Think Different” slogan was not well known in the region. Apple was asked to prove that at least 50% of Swiss people associated “Think Different” with Apple, which the court ruled was unproven.
The case then went to the European Court of Justice, which has now rejected Apple’s claims that the original ruling was flawed. In summarizing its ruling, the court said it “considered that [Apple’s] argument was based on a misreading of the disputed ruling.”
“[The Appeals Board] did not deny that the word ‘Think Different’ had any distinctive features,” it continued, “but found that they possessed a rather weak distinctive feature.”
For trademarks, the proprietor must demonstrate that the word or phrase is distinctive in itself, or through its use and recognition. The court didn’t object to Apple’s slogan being different, insisting that it wasn’t enough to mean consumers would be confused by “Tick Different.”
The ruling was also based on Apple’s failure to demonstrate that its trademarks “had been used for bona fide use of the goods in question” five years before the lawsuit was filed. Apple’s submission on the use of the phrase predates the “relevant period of more than 10 years.”
The decision is Apple’s latest in a long-running trademark case with Swatch. These include Swatch winning in the UK for its argument that “iWatch” is too similar to “iSwatch”. Apple ended up not using the name iWatch, opting instead for the Apple Watch, arguing that Swatch trademarked its name purely as a pre-emptive strike against Apple.
Likewise, Swatch won a trademark lawsuit in 2015 over the phrase “one more thing,” even though the phrase was associated with Steve Jobs. Swatch denies this is linked to Jobs. The company said it chose the phrase because it was used earlier in “Columbo.”
