Lawsuit Claims Apple Infringed On iWatch Trademark

Probendi, a purported software company out of Ireland, has filed a lawsuit against Apple. Apparently, Google searches for “iWatch” are giving users the Apple Watch landing page as the top hit. Probendi, who owns that trademark overseas, thinks these search results — which are totally accurate considering millions of consumers call Apple Watch “iWatch” (and have done so since years before day one) — somehow infringe upon its trademark. Roger Fingas of AppleInsider has the delightfully ironic details (emphasis mine):

[Probendi] owns rights to the iWatch trademark in the European Union, and a lawyer acting on their behalf noted that Apple never replied to requests or objections, while Google denied responsibility for such links.

Last year, Probendi co-founder Daniele Di Salvo claimed that the company was working on an Android smartwatch that would use the iWatch name and beat the Apple Watch’s price.

To summarize: A cybersquatter hoping to sell its trademarked “iWatch” name to Apple for big bucks was spurned when Cupertino didn’t actually use that moniker. Then, the crestfallen company publicly stated that it planned to explicitly violate Apple’s family of trademarks and protected branding by intentionally misleading and confusing consumers about its own competing product, capitalizing off of the historical naming conventions of Apple devices. Then, once Probendi realized they’d be sued into oblivion for even attempting such a scummy thing, they’re now trying to argue that Apple is somehow at fault for the population at large colloquially calling the computer giant’s latest product “iWatch” and getting the Google results they were actually searching for.

All that said, Probendi might make a few bucks. There’s a reason this case was filed in Italian court.