The Victoria School of Business and Technology in Canada has received a cease a desist letter from Apple Inc. citing trademark infringement with its apple logo.
While similar in shape (particularly the singular right-leaning leaf), the school’s logo is green, white and blue, and includes its name in the image. One of Apple’s biggest concerns is the fact that the school offers software operation courses.
"Your business logo…reproduces, without authority, our client's Apple design logo which it widely uses. By doing so, you are infringing Apple's rights, and further, falsely suggesting that Apple has authorized your activities," Apple's lawyer Stephanie Vaccari wrote in the letter to the school.
The school responded with a letter of its own, denying any infringement.
“Are you suggesting that anyone using any variation of an apple for technology education related use is infringing on Apple’s trademark?” the school’s president and CEO Dieter Gerhar writes, adding that it has been using the logo since 2005 and the school's classrooms are stocked with iMac computers.
This isn’t the first time Apple has tried to protect the “fruits” of its labor, so to speak.
The company’s had an ongoing dispute with the Beatles’ record label Apple Corps, which they settled last year, and it recently filed opposition to a trademark application for the apple logo used in New York’s GreenNYC initiative.
No apple for Vancouver Island school, says computer corporation [CBC]
