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Spanish Firm Wins Tablet Case Against Apple
pmontra writes "A Spanish company has won a legal case against Apple and will be able to sell an Android tablet that Apple had claimed infringes on the iPad patent. It is now seeking damages from Apple for a temporary seizure of its products by Spanish customs. Furthermore they are pursuing an antitrust complaint against Apple, alleging abusive anticompetitive behavior."
there should be stiff penalties for frivolous lawsuits and
There are, if you can prove that its frivolous and/or using the court systems as an anti-competitive hammer. If the court really decides that youre a nuisance, they can nail you pretty hard.
There are. If a company is requesting the (temporary) ban on importing or selling a competitor's product, it has to feet the bill if it doesn't prevail in court. Basicly Apple has (from a legal point of view) bought all the potential shipping of the competing product for the time being.
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=468916
Of course Apple didn't litigate this case -- it was a criminal case, and was therefore litigated by the public prosecutor *as all criminal cases are*. It would definitely appear, however, that the case was instigated by a *complaint* made by Apple.
"There's another reason though why we might see Apple let up to some extent - with Steve gone, Tim Cook seems like a guy who would be less passionate about suing other companies."
You reckon?
Apple only stepped up the litigation game when Jobs stepped down back in January, that's when they really took off with it. I'm actually concerned now Steve has gone despite Steve's anger towards the competition that this is more Cook's strategy, it just seems odd it started to head this way as soon as Cook started running things day to day and has escalated more and more the closer Jobs got to his death bed and hence the less involvement he was able to have with the company.
There may be quotes now saying Jobs wanted to kill Android and such and an angry man he may have been, but he wasn't stupid - I can't say I ever liked Jobs but he didn't do what he did by thinking litigation was the solution to everything, he did it by pursuing strong product design and marketing. Cook? I'm not so sure, I get the feeling the litigation route is his favoured option because under him innovation has plummeted and litigation has rocketed.
Sobreseimiento (as in the original report) != dismissal
Just nitpicking, though. I don't think there is a case.
No, they don't have to buy anything. They have to pay for the lost sales. I just hope that the German lawsuit falls through for Apple and they actually have to pay a lot. Samsung is no NT-K in volumes and price is comparable to iPad.
No, not really. Bill Gates has been a bit of a douche bag going all the way back to when he was complaining about people copying his implementation of basic while he was still in college. Microsoft has always been a company aimed at market domination and rolling in the fat monopoly rents that domination would create. When they first started out they used to publicly say they wanted to the be the only company in the computer business, which if you think about it, is a completely obnoxious goal to have. Microsoft has always been fundamentally dedicated to being evil*.
* Though Microsoft and it's peons are rarely able to recognize the inherent evil in deliberately trying to limit other people's choices and take money that they don't truly deserve (by using monopoly power to increases prices above what a fair market would settle on).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Based on what the document says, I think the implications of this case for Apple's enforcement of its design-related rights are probably much less wide-ranging than it initially appeared. It seems that even in Spain Apple could still assert its iPad design-related rights under civil law. Also, the nature of Apple's involvement may have been limited to that of an initial complainant (who according to nt-k also filed an indictment) as opposed to that of a party litigating a case all the way through. That's what my sources say, and it's possible.
IOW Apple didn't lose the case because they weren't really involved.
Fandroids hate facts.