Apple is working on a settlement with a fledgling meal-prep company whose pear logo it sought to bar for being too similar to its own famous emblem. Prepear’s logo — a pear with a leaf on top — “readily calls to mind Apple’s famous Apple Logo and creates a similar commercial impression,” the Silicon Valley giant said in a court filing over the summer, adding that the similarities would “cause the ordinary consumer to believe” that Prepear is “affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.” But in a filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board first reported by MacRumors, Apple asked for the proceedings to be suspended for 30 days while “the parties are actively engaged in negotiations for the settlement of this matter.” Super Healthy Kids — the company behind the Prepear app, which lets people store recipes and create meal plans — had accused Apple of “abusing their position of power by going after small businesses like ours who are already struggling due to the effects of Covid-19,” and pledged to fight Apple “not only to keep our logo, but to send a message to big tech companies that bullying small businesses has consequences.”
The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it has issued a warning letter to Amazon’s Whole Foods for not labeling some products for the presence of food allergens, which led to a series of product recalls. The supermarket chain, which was bought by Amazon in 2017 for $13.7 billion, has recalled more than 30 food products in the last year as the presence of major food allergens was not listed on product labels, the agency said. The products were mainly from the deli and bakery sections of the store, the FDA said. Whole Foods is responsible for investigating and determining the causes of the violations identified and for preventing their recurrence, the FDA said in the letter issued to the company on Dec. 16. The agency said the company should respond within 15 working days from receipt of the letter, listing out in writing the actions it is taking to address the violations. “We are working closely with the FDA to ensure all practices and procedures in our stores meet if not exceed food safety requirements,” Whole Foods said in an e-mailed statement.
Fashion resale platform Poshmark is plotting an initial public offering after raking in its first profits this year. The nine-year-old startup said it’s benefitted from the coronavirus-fueled boom in online shopping that’s helped its 4.5 million active sellers supplement their income by selling clothes out of their own closets. Poshmark runs an online marketplace where its roughly 32 million active users can browse and buy clothes and accessories from others on the platform. The company takes a 20 percent cut of each sale worth at least $15 and charges a flat $2.95 fee for sales below that threshold. The business has grown significantly in recent years — Poshmark handled more than $1.1 billion worth of transactions last year, up from $491 million in 2017 and accounting for about a quarter of the $4 billion generated since 2011, according to its Thursday IPO prospectus. The California-based company achieved profitability for the first time in the second quarter of this year and also ended the July-to-September quarter in the black, helping it swing to a nearly $21 million net profit in the first nine months of 2020 from a roughly $34 million loss in the same period last year, the filing shows. “Our
