
The UK Court Sanctions Apple, Hopes "Lack of Integrity" Is Not "Typical" - esolyt
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20121109130213229
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chrisacky
No shit.[1]

"Apple. Your brand is being ruined by misplaced trust in a losing super-
aggressive legal strategy."

I genuinely used to like Apple. I can actually remember regularly checking the
website for the different gadgets I could buy. This was well before the
Android v Apple "fan-boyism".

I switched off totally from the anti-consumerism that drives Apple. They make
great devices that just work. I have no problems in borrowing an iPad for an
hour, but they consistently take strategies beyond their products that have
decremental effects to their customers and customers of other companies.

Who needs a third adapter for their phone (that will only work on iPhone5)?
Who needs a different form factor for their SIM card so Apple can secure three
year licencing deals with carriers? Who needs the walled garden of an App
Store that prevents developers from releasing Apps that might cross over with
iOS functionality... Who needs to write a book on Apple Software where the
terms demand that they only distribute the book on Apple platforms[2]..

Put honestly, there is very little that Apple does that could be interpreted
as being for the "better-ment" of people that aren't Apple customers. They
take a "fuck"[1] everyone attitude that isn't a beneficiary of Apple stock.

I just think that this is a very toxic label for Apple to have against them.

Just to stress... I think Apple make great products, although I will never
again contribute a single cent to anything that bears the Apple name. They
have all but destroyed their brand that I once so sorely coveted (and this was
a time not so long ago).

Who needs humility... Clearly, not Apple...

    
    
        [1] : I hate swearing. Apologies. 
        [2] : This got changed shortly after considerable backlash.
        [9] : I need to stop writing so many "Apple" critical comments..
              If you look through any of my last 50 comments I'd guess
              perhaps 10 are Apple related. It's wrong of me that I consistently 
              only comment on Apple posts.

~~~
jrockway
I was the same way until one day, I tried to run gdb on iTunes, and gdb
segfaulted. I did some research and found that Apple added extra code to the
OS just to prevent someone from doing exactly that. They spent additional
engineering effort just to lock me out of my own computer. (I still wonder
what data collection they were trying to hide.)

Anyway, that was the day I deleted OS X and switched back to Linux forever. (I
even ran Rockbox on my iPod until I replaced it with a $30 Sansa device with
10x the features.)

~~~
Osmium
Playing devil's advocate here, but what's the media store like on your typical
Linux distribution? The reason Apple has to go to such draconian measures is
to please their content providers. Without doing so, you wouldn't have an
iTunes store with such a wide variety of content.

Apple's margins from content sales are slim; they push content to sell
devices. As they've shown with music in the past, they'll get rid of DRM if
the content providers allow it. So it's not entirely fair to blame Apple for
that one.

~~~
caf
The content providers seem happy with iTunes running on Windows without such
protection.

~~~
pyre
When Apple first signed on the labels, iTunes _didn't_ run on Windows. Do we
know when these protections first showed up? Was it Apple's way of appeasing
the labels before they gained enough mass that the labels couldn't ignore
them?

~~~
caf
I don't know about the debug protections, but according to Wikipedia's
timeline, it was only a matter of 6 months between iTunes Store appearing and
iTunes becoming available for Windows.

------
nagrom
Watching this play out is hilarious. I'm not quite sure if it is
schadenfreude, the morbid curiosity akin to that experienced from watching a
snake eat a rabbit, or just the prospect of watching an 800lb. gorilla behave
like a spoiled child, but I have a real feeling that Apple could end up
fighting the UK court systems and losing, very, very hard.

I simply cannot believe that Apple's previous behaviour was sanctioned by its
legal team. The idea of not just losing in court but then pissing the judge
off...wow. There's a really childish part of me that hopes that Apple won't
comply with this latest judgement just to see what the court does next.
Monetary fines? Product bans? Executive jail time?

I believe that the best thing Apple can do now is fold, and grovel. However, I
have no idea if they'll do that. I've said before in previous threads: the UK
court system is much more invested in proving its own authority than Apple is
invested in a silly argument with Samsung. And on that note, if you were
Samsung, you'd likely be rolling in the aisles just about now.

EDIT: I see that they've complied. I see why, but I'm disappointed!

~~~
adaml_623
Why do you think the penalties for perjury and contempt of court are so
extreme?

A large chunk of society hanging together and working relies on impartial but
powerful judicial systems. It's one of those thin edge of the wedge
situations. We don't want a system where people flout court rulings even if
it's just about a notice on a website.

~~~
cstross
Also note: British judges and prosecutors are _not_ elected by popular vote --
they're appointed from within the system on the recommendation of their peers.
So they're heavily invested in the authority of the judicial system itself,
rather than in dancing to the electoral campaign paymasters' tunes.

------
mtgx
Apple is increasingly acting like a spoiled toddler who doesn't like it when
he can't get what he wants.

~~~
zmmmmm
I actually genuinely think they are slightly delusional internally.

They _really think_ they invented multitouch, rounded corners, that
popularisation = invention, that their inventions are worth $30 per handset
while everybody elses are worth $1, and that they occupy a special place in
the world that exempts them from rules others must follow. Thus I don't
actually see them in the "spoilt toddler" mode, rather more like an autistic
adult person behaving rationally in a world that constantly baffles them
because they have a different internal model of its rules. And I even see this
as possibly essential to their success - you can't create products that defy
conventional expectations unless you are slightly crazy - "the people who are
crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that actually
do" truly fits. Of course, this doesn't absolve them of anything, now that
they occupy such a position of power in the world they need to grow up and
live in reality.

~~~
Osmium
I'm not sure I agree with your analogies, but I think you're right that Apple
really does think they're responsible for the spread of those technologies.
There's no denying that they were a game-changer: all consumer electronics can
now defined as "pre-Apple" or "post-Apple" just by looking at them.

The problem is that people disagree to the extent Apple should be compensated
(or their ideas protected). More technology-minded people can see the roots of
Apple's devices, and so think it's inevitable and all Apple did was
"popularise" it, while others think that Apple's innovations were/are a stroke
of genius, and without them we'd be floundering in a world of Windows CE and
Symbian for the next decade.

The trouble is, no one's wrong. It's just a difference of opinion. And that's
the patent system in a nutshell. People spend so much time arguing Android v.
Apple that it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is that we're
really arguing "how far can a company have a monopoly on an idea? and even if
they did invent something, is it fair that they can impede the progress of an
entire industry to protect that invention?" Because I can assure you, even if
Apple was responsible for every chip and every bit in the iPhone, from concept
to execution, people would still want Android, and people would still resent
Apple for wanting a monopoly.

~~~
nitrogen
_...all consumer electronics can now defined as "pre-Apple" or "post-Apple"
just by looking at them._

So the Braun T3 radio[0] and LE1 speaker[1] are definitely post Apple, right?

[0]
[https://barryborsboom.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/172_721-ra...](https://barryborsboom.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/172_721-rams-
ipods-1.jpg)

[1] [https://barryborsboom.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/mac-
speake...](https://barryborsboom.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/mac-speaker.jpg)

~~~
fwr
You are comparing a radio and a speaker with an mp3 player and a computer. Not
everything is design.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
This whole deal is about design patents (or registered designs, depending on
jurisdiction), basically the look of the box that the electronics are housed
in; the content ot the box is immaterial in this respect.

------
RossM
I did not know that Apple's paper advert had been pushed back so late. I have
seen a photo of one that appeared in the Guardian about a week ago [0] which
as a reader I would skim over given the lack of branding and its similarity to
adverts that try to appear part of the newspaper copy, yet have that tell-tale
'Advertisement' header. (These are common to all newspapers in the UK, big and
small - maybe elsewhere also.) Skipping over these is something that regular
readers naturally do and I expect the design is intentional.

I am very interested to see what their Nov 16th ad will look like. Given that
it must appear in magazines as well as broadsheets it may be that the mags
require it to have some sort of branding/style so as to not make the magazine
appear cheap, unlike the image linked.

[0]: [http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontline-
blog/2222112/apple-p...](http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontline-
blog/2222112/apple-print-apology-to-samsung-hits-the-newsstands)

------
jarcoal
What a mess this is on both sides.

Apple has reacted poorly, but if I were British I would be a bit upset that my
judges were wasting time on punishments like this. The point is to punish
Apple, so just fine them and be over with it. The end result is the same, just
without all this drama in the middle.

EDIT: I'm going to retract my opinion here because a few good points have been
made and I shouldn't have spoken when I was not 100% informed on the matter.
Sorry!

~~~
lutze
I'm British, and I actually feel quite the opposite.

Apple sought to use UK courts to their own ends, and then threw a bitch fit
when the ruling didn't go their way.

The judge is absolutely right to slap them down. You shouldn't get to pick and
choose which court orders to respect, even if you're the richest company in
the world. That's hardly the basis for a sound legal system is it?

Frankly, whoever authorised this reaction in the first place is a
disrespectful idiot. They treated the UK like a fucking banana republic, and
got reamed accordingly.

~~~
flatline3
The judicial system shouldn't be able to force you to say anything you don't
believe in, to your own customers, with no means of telling your side of the
story.

Self determination is a sacrosanct right, and this punishment crosses the
line.

~~~
keithpeter
UK resident: no, there is no 'sacrosanct right' here at all. If a company
_chooses to take legal action_ in the UK, then they have to comply with what
the court decides. If they don't, there will be consequences.

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comex
Poor copywriting. If the snark were written more precisely so that it couldn't
be considered misleading, Apple would probably have been able to get the press
points without being forced to put a large statement on their homepage
disclaiming the previous one as "inaccurate".

~~~
bengl3rt
Welcome back to being allowed to comment on Apple things publicly! Feels good,
doesn't it?

~~~
comex
It's fun being a fanboy.

------
Camillo
I can't even tell what's going on any more. All of this notice-posting is
meant to undo the "harm" Apple has caused by saying Samsung copied the iPad,
right? But the court insists that it never even touched the question of
whether Samsung copied the iPad. Yet the same court is upset about Apple
suggesting that Samsung did copy the iPad.

So, to sum up:

\- Apple said that Samsung copied the iPad;

\- the court wants Apple punished for saying that;

\- although the court never made any determination about whether Samsung
copied the iPad;

\- and Apple is still forbidden from saying that Samsung copied the iPad.

Nope, still confused.

~~~
Nursie
You're confused because you're trying to oversimplify.

Try reading the article again, the court case was over a registered design,
not the iPad

~~~
Camillo
Yes, but if you believe that Samsung's business incurred substantial damage
from a perception of infringement, surely that perception would have to be
"Samsung copied Apple's products", not just "Samsung infringed Apple's
Community Registered Design No. 000181607-001".

Basically, if the case was "big" (over the issue of Samsung copying the iPad),
then:

\- the court would have had to rule on whether Samsung copied the iPad; and,
if it ruled negatively, then

\- Samsung could have claimed to have incurred a significant damage to its
reputation after being smeared as a copycat, and

\- the court would have had reason to prohibit Apple from reiterating the
copying accusations.

However, if the case was "small" (over the issue of Community Registered
Design No. 000181607-001, and explicitly excluding the question of whether
Samsung copied the iPad), then:

\- the court would merely have to rule on whether Samsung infringed that
specific design, explicitly leaving open the question of whether they "copied
the iPad" or not; and, having decided negatively, then

\- the damage to Samsung's reputation would have been insignificant, since
(some) people care about whether they are copycats or not, and the court's
decision on that specific registered patent does not touch the greater
question, and thus

\- the court would have no grounds to prohibit Apple from saying: "the court
ruled that Samsung didn't violate this specific registered design; however, we
still believe that they copied our products, and here are a few other cases
where they were found to infringe our IP".

You see what I mean? I don't see how you can have BIG damages, BIG punishment,
BIG limitations on what Apple can say if you don't also have the BIG decision
that would justify all that. And the court has said over and over that they
have made no such decision.

~~~
Nursie
Apple sues over the design. The design is not the design of the iPad.

Apple says 'they copy our products! See, look at this court case'

Case goes against them, they're ordered to apologise. They fail to stick to
the terms and put a load of stuff around it that muddies the waters and talks
about unrelated cases in other juristictions.

Judge gets annoyed and makes them take down the other stuff as misleading,
specifically noting that they haven't even tested the question of the iPad,
and that the decision in this case does not contradict decisions in other
cases where this design was brought up.

And the court clearly does think it can make apple carry an unembellished
statement, and they're probably right .otherwise I guarantee we'd be seeing
appeals.

------
pfortuny
Serves them well. Stupidity (if not malice) has to have its price.

------
jpxxx
Tim Cook, past-peak, Steve Jobs would never, bully, bullying, bullies,
bullied, overpriced, one mouse button, luxury, ivory tower, arrogant, evil,
marketing, finally.

~~~
dboat
Some manner of inside joke?

~~~
jpxxx
I figure that if you put all of the asinine and dipshit comments into one big
one, it'll drain the swamp and allow for some actual conversation.

~~~
Karunamon
An interesting concept, but that's what the downvote arrow is for. And looking
at your BS-magnet post, it appears to be working fine.

~~~
jpxxx
True. :) spend 'em if you gottem!

