“Apple Inc. has a secured a court ruling allowing the company to register the layout of its retail stores in the European Union as a trade mark, an extension of its intellectual property that it had already acquired in the U.S.,” Matina Stevis reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“The EU’s top court said Thursday that Apple’s flagship stores fulfilled the three criteria for a trade mark: they constitute a sign; they can be represented in a graphic; and they can distinguish the goods or services sold by one company from those of another,” Stevis reports. “‘From this the Court concludes that the representation of the layout of a retail store, by a design alone, without indicating the size or the proportions, may be registered as a trade mark for services,” the court said in its judgment.'”
Stevis reports, “The judgment allows Apple to replicate its distinguishing store layout—airy, well-lit interiors displaying Apple goods on open table tops—in the EU and stops competitors from replicating the style in their shops.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Suwon weeps today.
With this new ruling and a quarter Apple can make a phone call. It’s pretty obvious now that these “protections” are worth little when it comes to enforcement. Now if the ruling had given Apple the right to storm a copycat store with chainsaws and sledgehammers… Then we’d have something.
The EU offers significantly greater protection than all the Asian places where Apple chooses to source its parts. Apple has lost billions — and more importantly, taught its competitors everything it developed — by dealing with unscrupulous Chinese and Korean suppliers. “Supply Chain Genius” Tim Cook still hasn’t rectified that mess. The lame excuse that it would cost more money to buy parts from reputable manufacturers or make parts in house is demonstrably false since Apple is having problems hiding its cash horde from Wall Street.
I suspect you know nothing about the topic. Where are these “reputable manufacturers”? Who else can supply those kinds of electronics in those kinds of quantities? Nobody I know of.
By the way, how large a business do you own, that your wisdom is so much greater than Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and the Apple board? Seriously — I want to know. How big a business do you run?
Waiting.