The EU ordinary court rejected Apple's appeal against swatch's slogan "tick different", saying that the objection was based on "Misreading" of the ruling, but the company's "think different" trademark remained revoked in the region Apple and swatch have been involved in a number of court cases on the issue of trademark similarity. Each company claims that the other party infringed the trademark. Among them, the longest lasting is swatch's "tick different" series, which Apple sued in april2017.
The Swiss Federal Administrative Court finally ruled in 2019 that Apple's "think different" slogan was not well known in the region. Apple was asked to prove that at least 50% of Swiss people associate "think different" with apple, and the court ruled that this was not proved.
The case was then referred to the European Court of justice, which rejected Apple's claim that the original ruling was flawed. In summing up its decision, the court said that it "held that the argument of [apple ] was based on a misreading of the controversial decision. [the appeals board ] did not deny any significant feature of the word'think different', but attributed it to a rather weak significant feature."
For a trademark, the owner must prove that the word or phrase itself is significant, or that it is significant through its use and understanding. The court did not object to the prominence of Apple's slogan, but it insisted that this was not enough to mean that consumers would be confused by "tick different".
The decision was also based on Apple's failure to prove that its trademark was "actually used for related goods" within five years before the lawsuit was filed. Apple submitted material around the use of the phrase "more than 10 years earlier than the relevant period".
This decision is Apple's latest decision in the protracted trademark case with swatch. Including swatch's victory in Britain, the reason is that "Iwatch" is too similar to "iswatch".
Apple didn't use the name Iwatch in the end, but chose Apple watch. However, it believed that swatch applied for a trademark for its own name simply to strike Apple first.
Similarly, Swatch won a trademark lawsuit against the phrase "one more thing" in 2015, although the phrase is related to jobs.
Swatch denied his relationship with jobs. The company said it chose this phrase because of its earlier use in the product "Columbo".