Apple trademarks its retail store design

[app103]

The US Patent and Trademark Office has approved Apple's request to trademark the design and layout of its iconic retail stores — stores that other US companies have tried in recent years to imitate. Apple had to fight to get its store trademark, with the patent office rejecting Apple's request twice. In the second rejection, the USPTO said that Apple's design wasn't "inherently distinctive," prompting Apple to file a 122-page document arguing its case, complete with consumer surveys and photos of its storefronts.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3930156/apple-trademarks-its-retail-store-design

[Renegade]

Tables, shelves, and a bar... Sounds like a typical watering hole to me. Perhaps "Ye Olde Tyme Tavern of Yore" should close up shop now before they get sued.

Next in the news... Sesame Street patents the letters D, U, M, B, and the number 3.

[40hz]

I think (considering it was granted to Apple) that it's both understandable and setting a dangerous precedent.

Understandable in the wake of those faked Apple stores found in China. Leave it to China to bring retail scamming to a whole new level. Now that's innovation!

But it's also a dangerous precedent in that Apple has been equally '"innovative" in pushing copyrights, trademarks, and patents to ever higher levels of absurdity.

Apple and China - a marriage made in...well, lets just say they're made for each other.

[app103]

The only good thing about this is that to actually have a case against another retailer that uses some similar elements as their trademarked store design, is that Apple would have to prove the store was so similar that it would confuse customers into thinking they were in an Apple store.

A business could actually get away with using a lot of the same elements as in Apple's trademarked design without getting in trouble. Imagine a pizzeria with a similar layout, with pizza images all over the place instead of tech gadgets, placemats and shakers of grated cheese & oregano on the tables, and a giant pizza on the outside, where the Apple logo would normally be. Unless someone came in thinking they could buy an iPhone there, they wouldn't be in breach of Apple's trademark. Being a pizzeria would save them, as long as that fact is very obvious.

Tables, shelves, and a bar... Sounds like a typical watering hole to me. Perhaps "Ye Olde Tyme Tavern of Yore" should close up shop now before they get sued.

Apple wouldn't have a case against them unless their customers get so drunk that they think they are sitting in an Apple store, and not a bar. The time to flag your customers and send them home, is long before they order an iPhone, instead of a beer. 

I actually thought the sketch illustrating the article looked a lot like my bank. 

[mouser]

stop the ride, i want to get off.

[wraith808]

This is why we need space research.  I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

[Deozaan]

This is why we need space research.  I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

No. No space research. Or else people/companies/governments will trademark habitable planets.

[Tinman57]

Tables, shelves, and a bar... Sounds like a typical watering hole to me. Perhaps "Ye Olde Tyme Tavern of Yore" should close up shop now before they get sued.

Next in the news... Sesame Street patents the letters D, U, M, B, and the number 3.

  Quick Renny!  Patent the square and circle before someone else does!!!

[Carol Haynes]

The trademark covers Apple's use of a "paneled facade" of glass, recessed lighting units, and perhaps most obviously, lined rectangular tables.

Anyone seen a school classroom recently? Hell there might be the odd computer there! Maybe even an iMac .... are schools going to get sued now?