Some weeks ago, I wrote about the iPhone clone, the hiPhone on my german blog. Since then that post has received over 50 comments. Those comments consist mostly of people looking to buy an iPhone for a cheap price or persons looking for some clone that does look like an iPhone has.
What happened?
When everyone was looking out for a hiPhone seller in the comments, someone showed up and claimed they got sued by Apple for 25k€ because of selling 6 clearly stated hiPhone copies. I did of course contact that person and ask for some document prooving that claim. I got those documents and they did really proove that this private ebay seller was being sued by Apple’s hired Lawyer-Company “Bird&Bird”.
Well, what bugs me is that this person didn’t get sued for only 1.000 or 2.000€. No, Apple asked for 15.000€ to cover attorney costs.
They are requesting the signing of a document that states some funny things:
- If the seller ever sells those hiPhones again, he’s obligated to pay Apple Inc. at least 25.000€
- The seller also has to shredder the hiPhones owned by him that are still in any EFTA country(does it blend ftw!)
- The seller is obligated to tell Apple who bought those hiPhones
- The seller is obligated to tell Apple where he’s bought those hiPhones from
- Pay Apple Inc. ~15.500€ (LOL!) for attorney costs
Some pretty high obligations. Considering that the seller has probably only made around 300-400€ profit from the hiPhone deals.
The thing is, Apple steals designs for itself.
What makes it funnier is one fact: The hiPhone doesn’t even offer the same ground-breaking features an iPhone has, the only thing they probably have in common is the home-screen and the design.
Well, Apple is mostly regarded as a successful company. I can’t disagree on that one. I use OS X at work too. It’s great. Except for iPods, those thingys suck.
But one thing they still have to learn is how to handle other people. Suing people for selling clones? Okay with me, but please, differentiate a little.
One Comment
Posted July 16, 2008 at 2:59 am
There is a clear difference between getting inspired by someone else’s design (e.g. Apple vs. Braun) and copying/cloning an entire device to fool the customer by making it look exactly like the original. The hiPhone even boots with the Apple logo up front. WTF?
I guess I’m just tired of poor Chinese copycats. First wristwatches and shirts, now electronic devices, cars, and even weak spare parts for aircrafts. The latter is quite dangerous. Where is it going to stop? Suing this vendor for only EUR 25,000 is a flimsy joke.
The amount claimed of course is not used to cover the attorney cost. They’re clearly making an example of this incident. Fair enough.