
A Small Company's Response to Monster Cable Patent Infringement Claims - chaostheory
http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/blue-jeans-strikes-back
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naish
He really appears to have relished flexing his legal muscle in crafting his
response. His rebuttal only improves with each paragraph. Nice for a lawyer to
be one of the good guys...

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sah
Best quote, near the end: "Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I
sometimes rather miss it."

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jeroen
A nice bit of PR for Monster:

"I assume that Monster Cable International, Ltd., in Bermuda, listed on these
patents, is an IP holding company and that Monster Cable's principal US entity
pays licensing fees to the Bermuda corporation in order to shift income out of
the United States and thereby avoid paying United States federal income tax on
those portions of its income;"

I don't think this is going the way Monster expected it to go.

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clzcyclone
Ooohhh, ouch! That is a brilliant response. One can't help but feel a little
uplifted after seeing a small company stand up for its rights against a
behemoth who attempts to persuade solely via its size and financial resources.

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dcurtis
He should use this opportunity to hire someone competent to design the Blue
Jeans Cables website, and then convert the amazing publicity he's generating
into sales.

Perhaps he could turn this into the tipping point for his company. Right now,
the site is so hideous, I wouldn't trust it with my credit card information.

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mechanical_fish
Um, because the most important quality in audio equipment is whether or not it
comes from a pretty website?

You _do_ realize that putting cheap crap into fancy boxes is how Monster Cable
makes enough money to afford their team of shyster lawyers...

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dcurtis
There's a difference between "fancy boxes" and a reputable website design.

You think the current website is sufficient for the company to gain
significant online purchases? It's not.

They don't have to overdo it, just make it usable.

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LogicHoleFlaw
Brilliant. Blue Jeans Cables is a plucky company. I've regarded them quite
well in the past, and now even more so. I think I know where I'm buying my
next set of cables from :)

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SwellJoe
If it's for digital devices, your next set of cables ought to be the cheapest
ones you can find that meet the spec that you'd like them to support. It is
pointless to buy fancy cables--in digital, it either meets the spec and works,
or it doesn't meet the spec and fails to work. More than 10 bucks for pretty
much any short-run cable would be nuts. HDMI 1.3 spec (the kind that'll carry
1080p and even higher) cables can easily be found for under 10 bucks.

Even in analog signals, a quality pure copper cable of sufficient gauge with
quality connectors put together correctly, is all that matters. All of the BS
from Monster Cables (and other "boutique" cable vendors) has clouded the
market with ridiculous nonsense. Blue Jeans Cables appears to eschew that
nonsense, and build quality "normal" cables. They are a little pricey, but not
terrible, I guess...maybe two to six times the price I'd pay, vs. the 10 to
100 times Monster charges. What amuses me is that if you were to buy one of
the "low end" Monster cables (which are relatively small gauge), it would
perform measurably worse than bulk 10 or 12 gauge copper cabling from an
electronic parts outlet and cost significantly more.

