New ruling will likely tick off Apple in its battle with Swatch

In 2017, Apple sued Swatch for its “Tick different” ad campaign, which the Cupertino, California-based company said was a rip-off of its former “Think different” campaign. But a Swiss court has backed the watchmaker.

In a ruling released on Tuesday, the Federal Administrative Court agreed, saying Apple hadn’t produced documents that sufficiently backed up its case, reports Reuters. 

Responding to Apple’s accusations two years ago, Swatch CEO Nick Hayek said any similarity between the two campaigns is coincidental. Hayek asserts “Tick different” has its roots in a Swatch campaign from the ’80s that carried the phrase “Always different, always new.”

This wasn’t the first legal tussle between Apple and Swatch In 2016, the latter successfully opposed Apple’s registration of the trademark “iWatch” in the UK. The UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) upheld Swatch’s oppositionSwatch Group AG took action against Apple for registering the “iWatch” as a trademark in 2014. The world’s biggest watch maker said the moniker — which is was once rumored to be the name of Apple’s rumored smart watch — is too darn close to its own iSwatch product. Of course, Apple’s smartwatch turned out to be dubbed the “Apple Watch” instead of the “iWatch.”