UK Court of Appeal Reprimands Apple Over Mandated Samsung Statement

Macthorpe writes "In the UK, Apple were previously ordered to add a statement to their website stating that Samsung did not copy their designs, following a previous case where this was ruled by the UK courts. However, today the same court revealed that Apple's statement is not good enough. From the article: 'The acknowledgement put up last week, linked from the home page by a tiny link, was deemed to be "non-compliant" with the order that the court had made in October. The court has now ordered it to correct the statement – and the judges, Lord Justice Longmore, Lord Justice Kitchin and Sir Robin Jacob, indicated that they were not pleased with Apple's failure to put a simpler statement on the site.' It appears the main objection is the statement is on a separate page and only linked from the hompage — and that the statement is buried in marketing blurb, and also put next to references to a case Apple won."

Comments

Hit em with a contempt charge - arrest the CEO.

[Anonymous Coward]

That might do the trick, plus the added benefit of putting at least one crook where he belongs after decades of *stealing* ideas from everyone else.

Re:Uh.... no.

[slim]

And to be fair, based on the verbosity of what Apple is required to post, I can understand their reluctance at putting it on their home page, since it could substantially alter how the page balances visually on a full screen browser

<sarcasm> Yes, that would be the main reason for Apple's relucatance</sarcasm>

Re:Uh.... no.

[DragonWriter]

And to be fair, based on the verbosity of what Apple is required to post, I can understand their reluctance at putting it on their home page, since it could substantially alter how the page balances visually on a full screen browser.

If sanctions didn't impact things that the sanctioned party cared about, they wouldn't be sanctions.

Re:Apples' response to the reprimand

[Macthorpe]

An analogy (sorry, not a car analogy).

If you spoke to a misbehaving boy, and told him to write 100 lines saying "I will not call the other kids bad names", would you accept his response if he wrote his hundred lines followed by "BUT THOSE OTHER KIDS ARE STILL POOPYHEADS"? No, you would ask him to do more lines, or come up with a different punishment entirely.

The behaviour of Apple in this instance is equivalent to a petulant child, and they are the only ones to blame if the court has to treat them as such.

Re:Apples' response to the reprimand

[Cederic]

All Apple had to do was follow the law. That's it, the spirit does not enter into it. If the judges did not want Apple to wonder off the reservation then they needed to explicitly state what Apple can and cannot do. That's how the law works.

Maybe in America. Over here we have a more mature and less easily bribed legal system.

Re:Apples' response to the reprimand

[AmiMoJo]

The judge would have done well to not leave this is the hands of Apple's legal and marketing teams, and instead sit down with somebody with half a clue about editing an HTML page, get to the result he believes to be fair, get back to Apple with that, and barring any valid complaints from their side, order them to make it just so.

Why should the court have to treat Apple like a six year old child? Any such attempt would have just wasted the courts valuable time and resulted in further legal wrangling from both sides. The court made its desire clear and expected Apple to be adult about it.

It's a shame they didn't start with newspaper ads, that way they would have been required to pay for another load.