When something or someone gets extremely popular, they will have tons of followers. Inevitably this will attract others who wish to have or own at least a bit of their fame and fortune.
Or maybe to troll them for whatever reasons.
Apple is one of the few companies that frequently deals with trademark and patent wars. And this time, it (again) lost to a Swiss watchmaker Swatch Group AG.
The late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, often said the catchphrase "one more thing" at the end of an Apple presentation before announcing a surprising new product. And when Swatch filed to trademark the phrase in the UK, Apple objected.
This resulted to a battle in court.
And Apple lost that legal battle.
In the ruling, judge Iain Purvis said that Swatch may have tried to "annoy" Apple with the trademark, but Apple can't block the Swiss watchmaker from using it, Bloomberg first reported.
This conclusion overturns previous court ruling.
He said that a previous court officer was wrong to say that "Swatch's intentions had stepped over the line between the appropriate and inappropriate use of a trademark."
The London judge added that the catchphrase may have originated from the 1970s fictional television detective Columbo, who was known for catching criminals and saying, "just one more thing."
The legal battle has been part of a long-running dispute between Apple and Swatch over the naming of their watches.
In the past, Apple has lost numerous legal battles.
After Jobs passed away, it was his successor Tim Cook who revived the "one more thing" phrase.
But when Apple realized that Swatch then sought to register the phrase, its lawyers said that Swatch's 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 lawyer Jaani Riordan said, according to the ruling.
Swatch won that legal battle, and Apple Apple couldn't name its smartwatch "iWatch" in 2014, as it was ruled too similar to the Swatch's iswatch.
In one other occasion, Apple also couldn't stop Swatch from using the slogan "Tick Different, which Apple claimed was too similar to its "Think Different" slogan.
At this time, both Apple and Swatch declined to comment.
