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IBM Sues Company Selling Fake, Flammable Batteries
Bergkamp10 writes "A Computerworld article is reporting that IBM is suing Shentech for selling laptop batteries that catch on fire and sport allegedly fake IBM logos. IBM apparently followed up on a claim by a customer that an 'IBM' laptop battery bought at Shentech caught on fire and damaged his laptop. The customer reported the problem to Lenovo (who license Big Blue's trademark) who subsequently ordered 12 batteries from Shentech and found them all to be fakes. IBM is asking for US$1 million in damages for each dodgy battery sold."
Yeah I wonder why they would want to ruin a company who produces counterfeit products with the potential to kill someone by abusing a brand name they have no right to?
All lithium-ion batteries are highly flammable, not just these. It's just that Shentech batteries are apparently more prone to spontaneous ignition than others.
Yeah, that and they're stamping IBM's name on them and selling them to customers who think they're getting genuine IBM replacement batteries.
Are you insane? $1Million is cheap, frankly, considering how incredibly damaging this could have been for IBM. With enough of these out there, IBM might have been facing a hundred different suits, half of them class-action, from all over the world. That says nothing for the positively massive loss of business they could potentially suffer as a result of a turn in public perception of their products. If just one of those batteries hit the laptop of, say, the CEO of a fortune 500, IBM could see millions in business go *poof* as fast at the battery burns.
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It's not greed. IBM doesn't want the money. They don't care who gets the money. You could burn it like leaves, right in front of them, and you couldn't get IBM legal to give less of a damn. Given their billing rates, you wouldn't WANT their legal team to put out a money fire. Cheaper to let it burn.
They don't want money. They want *blood*. This is "holy thunder of God Himself"-level wrath, possibly because this is the first *American* seller of counterfeits they've been able to get their yellowed claws on. That I've heard about, anyways. They're going to make an example out of him worst case, and best case they're going to make an example out of him and learn more about any US assets that can be linked to overseas counterfeiters.
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The US Federal Courts will, I'm sure, be immensely sympathetic to the argument that they have no jurisdiction over Shentech, Inc. of 1513 132nd St., Flushing, NY 11356.
RTFA It says $1m per counterfeit mark per type of item sold.
So, if they counterfeited 2 logos on each of 3 types of batteris, IBM is asking for $6M.
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These batteries could open IBM up to litigation, or could have, had they not been discovered. IBM are protecting their name, reputation, and business.
After all, a lawsuit from a single exploding battery could easily cost IBM more than a million dollars...
Sorry, the "coffee=hot" parable is still correct.
Not if the definition of "hot" that everyone assumes is nothing like how hot the liquid actually was. "Hot" is not binary.
You give hot liquids your full, undivided attention or you should NOT be handling them. If this means pulling the damn car over and walking in to get your caffiene fix DO IT!
I don't know anyone who actually treats coffee like that. Nobody treats coffee with their "full undivided attention", they walk around with un-covered cups all the time chatting with co-workers and what not and basically try not to run into anyone -- but even then they don't cautiously peer around every corner to make sure no one is coming. But based on what you are saying, the (pulling a number out of thin air) hundreds of thousands of people who drink coffee every day while commuting are knowingly putting themselves at risk of third degree burns and painful skin grafts.
Or, perhaps more plausibly, nobody actually considers a normal cup of coffee to be that serious of a threat, and everyone's "coffee==hot" equation does not apply for such high values of "hot".
Do you seriously walk around holding your coffee cup in two hands, blowing off anyone who attempts to engage you in conversation or otherwise distract your full attention from the danger in front of you? Or do you treat it like you would, say, a hammer, that would hurt like the dickens if you dropped it on your foot but you would hardly expect to hospitalize you? If the former, kudos to your caution, but you're completely abnormal.
There's also the "spilled it into clothing which holds it against your skin and continues to burn you" hot too. It's not like you get a peltier effect by dropping hot coffee on yourself.
Yes, that made the burns worse. What's your point, that she shouldn't have been wearing clothes? She still would have received third degree burns almost immediately. Maybe she would have only had to be in the hospital for four days instead of a week if she'd been wearing jeans instead of sweat pants. Maybe her genitals would have merely been badly scarred instead of requiring skin grafts.
Just about every coffee drinker has spilled coffee on themselves at some point. I don't know any who have been scarred as a result even if they spilled it on their pants, and I don't know anyone who was surprised that they were not seriously injured. A perhaps second degree burn requiring some aloe vera cream is about what any normal person expects.
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