Russian patent agency declines augmented reality trademark application from Apple

Rospatent, Russia’s patent and trademark agency, has declined an application from Apple to register the trademark AR, an abbreviation that stands for “augmented reality.” The agency’s Chamber of Patent disputes determined that several other companies have already trademarked similar abbreviations for phrases like “airports of the regions.” Apple argued unsuccessfully that because AR is a broadly used term for augmented reality, the presence of similar abbreviations in Russia should not prevent its registration. The company released ARKit, a toolkit for augmented reality application developers, in 2017. It registered an international augmented reality trademark that same year.