Apple Sues Swatch Over Use of ‘Tick Different’ Slogan

Last week, Apple’s legal counsel filed a complaint with the Swiss Federal Administrative Court against the Swiss company, Swatch, specifically over the watch-maker’s use of the slogan “Tick Different” in its recent ad campaign to promote its new Bellamy quartz wristwatch featuring built-in NFC Visa payment technology, according to the Swiss-language publication Watson.

At the root of the disagreement is the watchmaker’s use of the slogan “Tick Different,” which Apple is claiming it “unfairly trades” on its own “Think Different” ad slogan. Swatch, however, is regarding the reference as “purely incidental.”

Arguably among the most famous and influential ads in history, Apple’s “Think Different” campaign was the cornerstone of the company’s pivotal, turn-around marketing blitz between 1997 and 2002. Specifically, the slogan emerged from Apple’s 60-second ‘The Crazy Ones’ ad spot, which featured a consortium of some of the most influential world-changers who ever lived. Among them were icons including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Einstein, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mahatma Gandhi, and many others — followed by a brief ‘Think Different’ flashing across the screen below the Cupertino-company’s original rainbow-clad Apple logo. See the advertisement below.

Apple had originally attempted to block Swatch’s use of the ‘Tick Different’ slogan by filing a complaint with the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, according to Watson. Since that claim was ultimately rejected, however, Apple elected to take the watchmaker to court the old fashioned way — although Apple apparently faces a tough test in driving its case home.

That’s because, according to Swiss law, the court would need to establish that the ‘Tick Different’ slogan was in some way associated with Apple by at least 50% of the Swiss population backing up that notion, in order for the court to be persuaded in Apple’s favor. Meanwhile, Swatch argues that ‘Tick Different’ is merely a spin-off of its own 1980s “Always different, always new” slogan.

This wouldn’t be the first time Apple and Swatch have found themselves battling it out in court over a trademark dispute. Swatch, creators of the iSwatch, had argued back in 2014 that Apple’s use of iWatch would be too similar to its pre-existing wristwatch. Even Apple CEO, Tim Cook, admitted before the original Apple Watch was unveiled in early 2015 that the company had planned to call the device iWatch, prior to changing the name to Apple Watch at the last minute in light of Swatch’s successful bid to block Apple from using the name iWatch.