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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

In the US, everyone pays for their own lawyer, even when they lose. So it makes sense for companies like apple with deep pockets to sue others, they win by forcing their opponent to pay huge legal bills indefinately.

But that's not true (I believe) in Canada. So what's the deal here? Do Apple actually think pears are apples and they can win the case?

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Win or Loose, whilst the resource impact upon Apple in this action may well be as good as zero, the impact upon the defendant will not - however the outcome goes.

That factor alone, is what will see many such letters from Apple see the recipient just go with the easy option, even if they have a case for defence.

As for the whole Canada aspect, I'm sure there is method in this, not sure what and may be case of some previous cases in that country they can refer towards as comparable cases that lean too their favour. Maybe Blackberry had a trademark case in Canada against some other berry logo company! That would give Apple some nice legal precedent they can lean on.

[EDIT ADD] Might be that the legal system in Canada is less impacted via COVID than the USA, or been a factor at time of filling.

Apple isn’t suing and there isn’t a case. It’s just a filing to the trademark office.

In the modern era the English courts abolished a rule that once upon a time was designed to prevent rich people buying justice. That rule said you can't pay for somebody else's lawsuit, people putting up the cash need to be the actual parties.

Getting rid of it seems like a bad thing. Except, it turns out in an era of venture capitalism it wasn't hard to put together a financial structure in which lots of money will back "sure thing" legal positions that wouldn't otherwise have any money behind them regardless.

HN not so long back linked the outcome of lawsuits filed against the Post Office (a legally distinct entity from the Royal Mail, the Post Office is responsible for er, Post Offices, but does not actually deliver mail anywhere) by various post masters (people who operated a post office as a franchise). A crap IT system named "Horizon" was imposed by the management on franchise operators and that system ended up blaming them for losing large sums of money that probably never existed - in some cases resulting in them getting criminal sentences or committing suicide.

The British government eventually owns the Post Office, and so the government's unlimited funds were available (and used) to defend this lawsuit, even though it should have been obvious for some time that the case was in the plaintiff's favour. Ordinarily they'd have just run out of money and the Post Office "wins". But in this modern era they instead sold their easy win to the people with a lot of money, who were quite happy to spend millions if that's what it took to win millions more in damages. The injured parties don't end up seeing very much of the money awarded as damages but they do at least win and humiliate the people who lied and (in some cases) drove their colleagues to suicide or sent them to prison.

This wouldn't be possible in the American system, but if we must have people with very deep pockets filing dubious lawsuits, I think this English reform is at least an opportunity for small players to level the field in this way. If Apple knew that "just out-spend them" isn't necessarily a way to win no matter how tiny the opponent they might not file bogus lawsuits.

I think you're referring to champerty and maintenance? I fail to see the relavence here. Apple is the direct party and they can afford to pay for their own lawyer.

I think the parent is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fee... which seems much more relavant to the matter at hand.

IANAL

Yes, Champerty in particular. I agree that the English rule would help, but it's not enough because you have to pay for your expenses during the lawsuit, even if you are confident of ultimate success that can be impossible.

Litigation finance (enabled by getting rid of rules against Champerty) fixes that.

It's more about defending your trademark. In principle, Apple doesn't care about some random company using a pear, but if they don't defend it now to the full extent, in any future dispute with a potential competitor, then "you didn't defend it that one time!" becomes an argument.

That's not how trademark law works. Though it is how a lot of companies like to pretend it works in order to justify obviously egregious lawsuits.

At most you can make an argument that estoppel can apply. Estoppel prevents you suing somebody for doing a thing you agreed they can do, even if you would have been allowed to sue them for doing it if you hadn't agreed they could do it. But estoppel doesn't magically extend to other parties.

Ask yourself: What does Apple have to gain from this? It can't be money, because it's a tiny company. Does Apple just like to start a "egregious lawsuit" for the fun of it, because they love to be evil? That explanation just doesn't work.

I'm not going to an enter into an armchair-lawyer contest with you. My understanding of the law is indeed limited, but it reflects what is going on in actual business.

Not every decision is going to be entirely rational, especially when it comes to giant corporations with thousands of stakeholders and various internal incentives that may not be visible to outside observers. E.g., sometimes companies do stuff simply because it's helpful for someone's upcoming performance review. Apple probably has a team responsible for trademark protection and these people have to regularly demonstrate activity to justify the budgets.

They don't do it to be evil, they do it to maintain the unique status of their brand. Apple is a luxury brand, like Louis Vuitton, or Mercedes. Their price difference compared to other brands is explained mostly by the value of their brand, not the value of their products, although they do make high quality products. That means they tend to defend the uniqueness of their brand, to the limit and beyond the limits of what the law allows.

Another possible explanation is that their lawyers are having a quiet period and either want more income or want to demonstrate their value. Oftentimes there can be an internal logic to these things that on the whole makes little sense but within an organization is perfectly rational.

The most likely explanation is bored lawyers justifying their own existence and angling for a bonus.

There really shouldn't be a case here. The logo is different, the trading area is different, there is exactly zero chance of confusing the two designs or the two companies.

Another possible explanation: They have a team of lawyers with the task of enforcing their trademark. It's a machine that went off tracks because they either started doing mass lawsuits or ran out of higher priority targets.

It's like when you have a team of lawyers with the job of looking at contracts and licences, they will start suggesting changes even if that makes no sense because they're paid to suggest changes. See jslint and the special "can be used for evil" licence.

Apple has a really weak brand and a recognition problem with their logo. Not surprising they took that course of action when that random company decided to use a fruit too. /s

That’s an oft repeated myth, but it’s not quite true.

From an article by the EFF:

> The circumstances under which a company could actually lose a trademark—such as abandonment and genericide—are quite limited. Genericide […] is very rare […]. Courts also set a very high bar to show abandonment (usually years of total non-use). Importantly, failure to enforce a mark against every potential infringer does not show abandonment.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...

The EFF is a strongly partisan organization, of course they advise against pushing these kinds of suits.

Call it a myth if you will, blame it on overzealous lawyer who just want to create work for themselves.

My only point is that this "myth" is so powerful that it creates a business reality where these suits are ubiquitous, but it's only news if a company like Apple does it.

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