Apple Inc. has filed a lawsuit against a Polish online grocery delivery service accusing them of using a similar name and logo to benefit from its trademark. A.pl Internet SA runs the popular A.pl website which has attained a worldwide global Alexa traffic rank of approx 72k and 1,032 traffic rank in Poland. The Polish grocer has been operating using the A.pl domain for at least the last six years according to screenshots.com and the name has been registered since 1999.
Image courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com
The logo which is no longer being used by A.pl does have some similarities. However, I tend to agree with A.pl CEO who when asked about the lawsuit said: “The accusation is ludicrous”. More of the same.. it seems Apple Inc has turned suing other companies into a consistent revenue stream.
A.pl is a very short and unique domain name. One character domains with any extension are quite valuable and I can see Apple fighting pretty hard in attempt to pry this name from it’s current owners. It would be the perfect URL shortener for Apple to use.
When I first heard of this story months ago I couldn’t help but laugh. Apple needs to calm their big ego down a couple of notches. They obviously think they can do whatever they want and they think they can take whatever they want. It’s about time somebody puts them in their place.
Unless Apple has a TM in all 45 classes, they need to crawl back to their little HQ in the US and accept the fact that they don’t rule the world!
@MR.T – Yes, not a new story but I wanted to bring it back up. It will be going to court soon. I agree Apple is just getting greedy with some of these lawsuits.