Apple Files Lawsuit Against Startup Company Over Fruit Logo

Prepear, a meal-prep app created by the people behind superhealthykids.com to help users prepare healthy meals at home, is now facing a tech giant for using a fruit as a logo.

A court filing shows that Cupertino tech giant Apple is opposing Prepear for using a pear fruit as its logo. The company said that its “famous and distinctive” Apple logo has “achieved an extraordinary level of fame and consumer recognition” as a result of its advertising, promotion and use of the logo across its devices and products.

Apple alleged that Prepear's pear logo is “likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive.” The startup's logo, which consists of a pear-shaped main body and a right-angled leaf, “readily calls to mind Apple's famous Apple logo,” the company said.

The tech giant also claimed that Prepear's logo has similar features to Apple's logo and may cause people to think that the two are related – that Prepear is an affiliate or is endorsed by the iPhone maker.

In response to Apple's court filing, Prepear's co-founder and COO Russell Monson started a Change.org petition asking for the public's support in the fight against what he called an “attack” against a “small business.”

“Apple has been opposing small businesses with fruit-related logos by starting expensive legal action even when those logos don't look anything like Apple's logo, or aren't in the same line of business as Apple at all,” Monson wrote.

Hear's a look at the two companies' logos:

Monson indicated that Prepear isn't the only company that Apple “attacked” for using fruit-related logos. He said the Cupertino tech giant has opposed “dozens” of trademark applications, all of them from small businesses. Some of them changed their logos, while others abandoned theirs.

“It is a very terrifying experience to be legally attacked by one of the largest companies in the world, even when we have clearly done nothing wrong,” he said.

The company COO is asking people to help them request Apple to drop its opposition against the pear-shaped logo as well as to “stop” big companies from “bullying” small businesses.