We're not making this up: Apple trademarks the SHOP After trademarking the leaf and patenting the rectangle, Apple has outdone itself by trademarking the shop. The US Patent and Trademark office last week granted Apple's application to trademark a retail store featuring computers. It is the "distinctive design and layout" that Apple now holds the unique design rights to, thanks …
"The Apple shops are very different to all others. There's a far higher concentration of pillocks among staff and customers."
Wow, did you enter a cheat for getting lots of upvotes or something or do only Apple haters read stories about Apple?
P.S. Fuck Apple lol
3 shop in west key southampton had a very similar layout.
As did the 7th floor IT classroom at solent, room... 9 I think? Massive room, exact same layout just on a larger scale.
Also the office I work in has the same layout,
Honestly how can you trademark the placement of other objects? If they'd invented something new then sure, but for the love of all that isn't apple... the USPTO really is filled with a bunch of nincompoops.
Quote: "I've seen some phone shops".
Vodafone, Three and O2 in the UK (most other countries still use old arrangement). It is post-Apple-retail though, 10 years ago it used to use different arrangement. The phones used to be on the wall with most of the shop open space. They copied the Apple retail standard arrangement as it allows more customers to wonder around tat to choose.
Rather pointless too as you are least likely to see a crowd of fanboi climbing over each other when a new "normal people" phone is released.
loads of mobile phone shops look like this. Ive seen an O2 shop look like this. Not as white (the O2 shop was still white) but they all had phones along the walls, the shop was longer than wider and had tables with a central walkway to the tills. The tables were narrowish but had products on them - some in glass cases with various bumf. Game also looked like this before it closed down
Just goes to shop how completely broken the US Patent Office really is.
Quote: "Why the 'f' not - after all if they don't every bugger would just copy it."
Every bugger has copied it even when it is pointless. Voda, O2, Three have all switched from "stock on the walls" to tables and stock on them. The counter has been replaced by a table for staff which sometimes so anti-ergonomic that it reminds me of theregister ikea/Jobbs spoof (vodafone) and asking for a H&S intervention. And so on.
All of it pointless as Apple store is designed for a high-flow of fanboi falling over each over to see tat. Most other retail outlets do not have to handle anything near that level of flow.
It seems trivial and obvious, but there is a subtle difference. Pretty much every store I've been in uses desks / stands, not tables (and definitely no stools / chairs). Their wares are there to be looked at, not played around with.
On teh other hand when I've been to an Apple store I could stop here and there and take 15-30 minutes to actually tray something properly instead of playing around for a few seconds.
So, may or may not warrant a trademark, but what they're doing is definitely better than what everyone else is.
> So, may or may not warrant a trademark, but what they're doing is definitely better than what everyone else is.
Actually, that would kill it. Something that gives a functional advantage cannot be trademarked. Patents are for useful innovations; trademarks are to distinguish something in the mind of customers. That's why the Coke bottle shape is a trademark, but an electric razor with three rotating heads is not (any more).
It seems trivial and obvious, but there is a subtle difference. Pretty much every store I've been in uses desks / stands, not tables (and definitely no stools / chairs). Their wares are there to be looked at, not played around with.
Think a bit more broadly than simply phone shops. Tables parallel to the walls, shelving along those walls, stools... it sounds very much like most book shops in fact. No mention of what the actual merchandise is, in the quotes in the article at least.
Microsoft trademarked their store design in October 2011, as reported on the Reg, only that story didn't have all the phony outrage.
I can't be arsed to search, but I'm willing to bet every retailer of any significance has trademarked their store design. You'd be on okay grounds trying to shut down a bogus store if you didn't have the right trademarks in place.
So, why all the bogus outrage? Oh yes, because it's Apple.
No... not prior art (well, this isn't a patent, but still), but not for the usual reasons. Have you recently been in a Microsoft store. Ok, no one has, but I've seen pictures. They don't look anything like that trademark document's drawings... they look exactly like Apple stores now. Guess it's that whole "tablets and phones" thing, must force one into the same design, can't help it, fact of nature, move along now.
And of course, no, no one bothered with Microsoft's trademark. Again, humans have yet to actually visit Microsoft stores. And their original design was ugly and stupid... a harbinger of Metro, I suppose. Apple's important, so naturally, things they do, good or bad, attract attention.
Actually, they were OK when it comes to hardware, just innovation appears to have come to a grinding halt. However, all this idiotic legal crap is seriously destroying my desire to buy more product from them. If they really think they need to do this to address competition they are evidently no longer interested in development.
Status quo and me too I can buy from anyone..
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