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New country, same accusation: Russian railway targets Apple over trademark

The Swiss railway won a settlement from Apple, but will the Russian railway?

The Russian Railways may be trying to model itself after the Swiss Railway—at least when it comes to extracting money from Apple. The organization (which goes by RZD in Russian) is suing Apple for allegedly infringing on its registered trademark, though it's still unclear exactly where Apple is making use of it. RZD's complaint only states that the "online Apple Store" makes use of its trademark, number 341333, and it wants 2 million rubles (about $65,000) for the infringement.

The Russian Railways suit sounds just like a Swiss railway suit filed in September of 2012. At that time, Apple had just released iOS 6 and added a new Clock app to the iPad—the icon mirrored the trademarked clock designs used in the Swiss Federal Railway (SBB) stations throughout Switzerland. Apple was (relatively) quick to reach a settlement, however; in October the company agreed to pay an unnamed amount of money to the SBB in exchange for continued use of the clock icon.The case was seen as a victory for the little guy, and the RZD may see itself as being in the same position as the SBB.

But the SBB case was different because Apple actually appropriated the Swiss trademark in its own app. The most likely explanation for the RDZ's lawsuit is that there are third-party apps in the App Store that make use of its logo, as TechCrunch highlighted. (This would also make the most sense as it relates to the RZD's Google-translated statement about the online Apple Store.) But the RZD doesn't offer specifics on why it chose to sue Apple—as opposed to the developer(s) behind the infringing apps—so there may be more to the story than we're seeing at the moment.

Channel Ars Technica