Apple Inc. filed a trademark infringement suit against San Francisco's Apple Cinemas Van Ness in August 2025 — and nearly a year later, the theater is still open under the contested name, with no injunction and a fresh Reddit complaint about maintenance conditions on the fourth floor.

Nearly a year after Apple Inc. filed a trademark infringement lawsuit seeking to strip the "Apple" name from a San Francisco movie chain, Apple Cinemas Van Ness is still open for business at 1000 Van Ness Avenue — still operating under the contested name, no injunction in sight. This week a post on r/sanfrancisco flagging "moldy standing water" on the theater's fourth floor added a fresh maintenance complaint to an already complicated record.

The suit was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter on August 4, 2025, less than a month after Apple Cinemas reopened the long-shuttered AMC Van Ness location in early July 2025. SFist, which covered the filing the following day, characterized the original opening as a "feel-good story" for the long-dark multiplex. Apple Inc. saw it differently. Attorney Miranda Means stated in the lawsuit: "Consumers should not go to an 'Apple Cinemas' theater thinking it is connected to the famous Apple brand, with all its goodwill and brand equity," per SFist. The complaint seeks removal of the "Apple" name and unspecified monetary damages.

Apple Inc.'s legal position has structural support. Federal trademark officials had already denied Apple Cinemas' own applications to register "Apple Cinemas" and "ACX – Apple Cinematic Experience," ruling both too closely related to Apple's film and streaming business. Apple Inc. also claims it sent a cease-and-desist letter before filing suit and that the chain ignored it — a factual posture that narrows a defendant's courtroom options.

The suit adds a tarnishment theory: online reviews of Apple Cinemas' other East Coast locations describe them as "greasy," "dirty," and "grungy," per lawsuit language cited by SFist. That argument — that a company sharing a brand name, behaving badly, degrades the famous brand's reputation — is a recognized but contested legal theory, and its weight in court depends on how much consumer confusion Apple Inc. can document.

Apple Cinemas co-founder Siva Shan told the San Francisco Chronicle at the July 2025 opening: "Every Apple Cinema is a luxury movie theater." The SF location's Yelp record runs more mundane: customers have complained mainly about reclining seats advertised at opening that aren't yet installed, per SFist. The moldy-water Reddit post, by user BridgeBoysPod and carrying 261 upvotes as of Thursday, adds a fourth-floor maintenance issue to that list.

Apple Cinemas has not responded publicly to the lawsuit or to the Reddit complaint; the company's website returned an error when accessed for this story. The specific court and docket number for the trademark suit have not appeared in available reporting. The strategic logic behind Cupertino's urgency is straightforward: Apple Cinemas has stated plans to expand to 100 locations nationwide over the next decade, per The Hollywood Reporter. Fourteen East Coast locations is a naming overlap a large legal department might monitor. A hundred-location national chain is a different problem entirely.