Apple was unable to prevent another company from registering Steve Jobs’s “One More Thing” because it was probably Detective Columbo’s phrase.

But this does not mean that Apple can somehow appropriate this phrase to itself. The Cupertino giant lost in court to the Swatch Group. A London court ruled that Swatch can register the famous phrase, and Apple cannot block the process. 

In fact, the process has been going on for several years and is the result of another litigation that began over the iWatch trademark. Later, the confrontation between Apple and Swatch spread to other areas and got to the famous phrase of Jobs. And if initially, the court of the first instance sided with Apple, now the London judge said that the previous bailiff was mistaken, saying that Swatch’s intentions, in this case, crossed the line between the appropriate and inappropriate use of the trademark.  

In addition, in his ruling, the judge pointed out that the controversial phrase in fact probably belongs to the character of the cult detective series “Colombo” – Detective Colombo.