John Hurrell – 2 May, 2018

Let’s break it down to four stages: the creation and transmutation of Billy Apple in his nominal and legal status.

They are:

(1) The life and art practice of Barrie Bates, after he was born in Auckland on 31/12/1935 and before he changed his name in London on 22/11/1962.

(2) The creation of Billy Apple that he confirmed by his change in appearance, his new social behaviour in terms of identity, its activities and representation—a very focussed practice that continued for another forty-five years—and a traveller’s passport. (This was accentuated by his activity of branding himself as an art object, and making of sculpture or lithographs of the fruit as a kind of self portrait.)

(3) The logo Apple designed in the early 2000s, of the apple fruit into which he inserted his name, forming a company (Billy Apple Ltd) in anticipation of a specially developed apple that could be harvested and marketed. (This image was his own logo but it lacked legal back up as intellectual property).

(4) Billy Apple as a brand then changed so that in 2007—with the help of Minter Ellison Rudd Watts—his constructed name and logo legally acquired the status of an unregistered trademark and then a registered trademark, giving him greater legal clout and wider protection.

Looking at (1): Even as a precocious student at the Royal College of Art in London, Barrie Bates was creating ‘Pop’ work that investigated the commercial mechanisms that sustained shops, art galleries and artists. He was fascinated by the processes of advertising and marketing, and their uneasy relationship with the ‘more serious’ art world.

Looking at (2): Through discussions with his friend, the painter Richard Smith from whom he rented a studio flat, the twenty-six year old Bates decided on ‘Billy Apple’, abandoning his birth name. The Apple brand was born.

Looking at (3): The apple fruit logo, a variation of photographs of apples on a tree being signed with a cursive ‘Billy’—or stuck with a transparent oval sticker on which his Christian name was printed—he had developed for several years before the legalities of the trademarking process were finalised, so that the unregistered (and then registered) ‘TM’ could be added.

Looking at (4): Apple‘s interest in his own intellectual copyright seems to have come after he felt some of his ideas were ripped off by Max Factor (see interview with Nicholas James in Billy Apple ®: Apple Brand, CV Publications, 2011) With the ‘TM’ and ® status came firstly the distribution rights for Printed Matter (Class 16), Clothing (Class 25), Fresh Fruit (Class 31), and Orchard Services (Class 44). Then came Non-Alcoholic Beverages (Class 32) and Alcoholic Beverages (Class 33). However the Fresh Fruit (Class 31) application for registration resulted in a challenge from the Washington Apple Commission. Apple is currently negotiating with this filed opposition before the dispute goes through an Intellectual Property Office hearings process, as well as seeking to confirm the security of his (Class 44) Orchard Services rights.

In 2012 Apple® also became involved with a project initiated by biochemist and artist, Dr. Craig Hilton, where he donated blood cell tissue to a Massachusetts research organisation, American Type Culture Collection—and to the laboratory of Auckland Professor Rod Dunbar—where in both cases it will be kept alive, its DNA studied for cancer research, and the possibilities of immortality investigated. Here Apple® continues a process akin to much earlier art works involving bodily substances, but now incorporating possibilities that after his death he will never know the details of—but which hopefully will be of immense interest to future legal scholars, oncology scientists and art historians.

John Hurrell

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