Apple hasn't said a peep about its plans for the wearable market, but the iWatch is already making other companies nervous. The world's largest watch maker, Swatch, claims that Apple's supposedly trademarked "iWatch" brand name is too similar to its own iSwatch name.
Swatch is so upset over the similarity between the two watch names that it has taken action against Apple in several countries to protect the iSwatch brand from confusion with the Apple iWatch.
Swatch CEO Nick Hayek explained that this is only to be expected from a company when it feels that one of its trademarked names is being threatened.
"This is the normal procedure to protect your own brand name," Hayek said. "We react like this for all other brand names that we have protected."
Hayek said that Swatch has no plans to take legal action against Apple, but that it hopes to dissuade Apple from using the name iWatch in other ways. He said that Swatch has already contacted several countries where iSwatch is a registered trademark in hopes of preventing iSwatch-iWatch confusion.
"If somebody wants to register a name that is too close to a name that we have protected, we fight against it," Hayek said.
Swatch has not contacted Apple directly about the matter and Apple did not comment on the situation. Although Apple did supposedly file a trademark for the name iWatch at the Japan Patent Office on June 3, it is unknown if Apple will actually use that name if and when it launches its own smartwatch.
Apparently, the name iWatch is a very popular one, though. Several companies have already tried to trademark the name, but Swatch always seems to fight them off with its claim on iSwatch. However, seeing as Apple is one of the most powerful companies in the world with a market value of $510 billion, which is 15 times greater than that of Swatch, it seems hard t believe that if Apple really wants to name its smartwatch iWatch, no one will be able to stand in its way.
