Come on. Really? When I opened my Adage email today I saw a headline titled “Apple Wants to Take Bite Out of Big Apple”, I was sure the story would be about a new marketing effort by the warm fuzzy company. Wrong.

Apparently, a new green-themed campaign to help elevate “The Big Apple’s” environmental efforts features… you guessed it, an apple. And apparently any apple used today to promote something directly infringes on Apple’s ability to build and market computer and other media hardware and software. Not my words, here are theirs:

“Any defect, objection or fault found with [GreeNYC's] goods and services marketed under [GreeNYC's] marks would necessarily reflect upon and seriously injure the reputation which [Apple] has established for its goods and services,” the claim states.

I know we now operate within a “convergence” marketplace. However, it is unreasonable to think that one company should be able to hold control of a mark within any and all categories it feels may diminish its own mark. Whatever happened to category ownership? Examples include Delta Air Lines and Delta Faucet Company. I know that brands that grow have a much larger mind share. But what if we give these brands carte blanch outside of their category? More importantly, what happens when this brand begins to falter down the line (Air carrier, are you paying attention?) Would we then give the “second” stronger brand in another category the ability to capture control back? Could we then assume that the “second” company in another category that gets “bigger” has the ability to take the first company’s mark, domain, etc.?

When I read it, my mind instantly flashed back to an article that I read on The Onion in 1998 about Microsoft taking action to patent ones and zeros (0, 1). While this was sarcasm at its best, it pointed out the obvious self-importance that Microsoft was feeling for itself at the time. Has Apple finally arrived to the same place? Someone in Cupertino should give this article a read and realize they are now the pot calling the kettle black.