Who lies for you will lie against you - Bosnian proverb
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Apple stops Kogan from selling Samsung tablets
AUSTRALIAN HARDWARE SELLER Kogan must stop flogging Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in its home country after Apple threatened to sue it.
Apple's pursuit of Samsung and its hardware is well documented and has clocked up a lot of airmiles. Recently the pair have had legal battles in the US, Germany, Korea, the US and, of course, Australia. In this latest win the fruit themed firm has forced a company that offers its own competing product to stop selling a competitor's product. Something that presumably says a lot about free trade.
According to Kogan's CEO Ruslan Kogan, he agreed to stop selling the device after Apple threatened to sue him. Kogan was wise to heed the threat, as in Apple's case you can normally take that as a promise.
"All we are trying to do is to provide the latest technology at the best prices. Pointless litigation is not our specialty," Mr Kogan told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Although Kogan sells Ipads at lower prices than other retailers by buying them in China, Apple Australia's law firm, Freehills was not moved by this. Instead, in a letter it said that Kogan was infringing Apple's Ipad patents and engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct by selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Apple has demanded that the company stop selling and advertising the 10.1in tablet and tell it who it bought them from. Kogan complied with the first demand, but not the latter one, according to the report.
That is not to say that it has taken the demands gently, however, and the firm suggested that Apple was using its muscle to stifle competition, something that might prick up some ears with the relevant regulators.
"There is a fine line between legitimately enforcing your intellectual property on the one hand, and just trying to stifle competition on the other - in our view Apple is very precariously walking that line," said David Shafer, Kogan's executive director, in a statement released to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Although the firm thinks it is within its legal rights to offer the tablets to consumers, as it acts as something of a middle man and makes the purchaser the importer, it seems unwilling to get too deep into talks with Apple's lawyers and for now it is taking a softly softly approach to dealing with them.
"If you decide to pursue the injunction, we will leave these matters to the court and we believe that our case is strong," wrote Shafer in a letter to Apple's Australian lawyers. µ
Tags: Apple
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14mm says it did.
You lost me with the copying content thing. Samsung may be sailing close to the wind on the hardware, but unless they are copying IOS, along with the Apple App Store and ITunes I fail to see how they are copying content. I can copy the Inq website design if I want to, as long as I am creating it without using any of their code then there really is nothing much to stop me. AFAIK Apple has their own hardware that they do not share with others, i have yet to see a Samsung branded IThing clone. Next you''ll be saying Audi, VW, and Skoda are all the same as they use common parts between brands....
LOL That was exactly right tree to pi$$. These m#rons are barking at Apple for a decade. Even the guy as genial as Mike Magee have done that and i remember myself as a religios wars hater of "bitten fruit" back then (i still do not buy anything Apple though).
/* ( sorry, Mike, if u read this, but it's clearly time to look at the broader picture)
Support our electronics companies from blatant copying and patent violations even if you hate their products ... and you may not see hi-tech extinct in all western countries during this generation. This asian revolution and exponential economic growth while we are stalled burden in debt is really serious matter. With 99.99% chance it means the end of western civilization.
Given that Samsung already have an injunction against them to prevent importing to Australia then it's purely a publicity piece (hey, look, we sell cheap tablets, but the bad men from Apple made us stop importing them. Oh, by the way we also sell cheap Apple tablets).
If Samsung could manage to produce a tablet that doesn't look like it's been designed with the aid of a photocopier (many tablets pre the iPad managed to look nothing like it, suddenly Samsung find this to be impossible?) then they wouldn't be in the position.
Apple are well within their rights to ask courts to block Samsung selling these devices. The courts have looked and decided that there's a pretty strong case on Apple's side, hence the injunction. If some (insane) company were to copy the Inq's website design and a large lump of their content it would be anti-free trade for the Inq to get the court system to take the site down?
I refuse to buy any of their stuff full stop, they are managing to make M$ look like angels at the moment
seriously, I am thinking about not buying any of their products anymore