Apple sues eMachines

Phrogz writes "Apple, following their July 1st lawsuits against Future Power and Daewoo for the same, is now suing eMachines for their use of an iMac-style design (the eMachines eOne). "

Comments

Re:Ugh.

[Evro]

From the Yahoo article:

"An eMachines spokesperson said in the paper that it was hoping to trade off Apple's brand name. If I was their lawyer, I would have died when I read that," says Weinstein, who practices trademark litigation. She says it gives Apple a chance to charge eMachines with willful infringement. Apple did not return calls seeking comment. "

Here is the point: they were trying to make money off Apple's success.

I have never seen a Fiat spider and so I can't comment on it. Maybe the fact that I've never seen one says something about why Mazda didn't get sued: the Fiat design was a flop while the Miata was a huge success.

Sure, car companies make cars that are ripoffs of each other all the time (see any SUV), but not when the styling of the car is so distinctive, as is the case for the Vette or Firebird. Otherwise, why wouldn't cheap car manufacturers just make a replica of the Vette's body and put it on a v6 and sell it for $15k?

Connectix VirtualPC

[Evro]

...runs win98 on a Mac and any Applications that run on win98. I think it's about $150 (which includes the win98 price)

What Part of "Theft" Don't You Understand?

[Fleet Admiral Ackbar]

What everyone seems to be missing (probably due to an unreasonable hatred of Apple) is that these machines are designed to confuse customers into purchasing them instead of iMacs!

eMachines, Daewoo, and Future Power aren't trying to sell neat-looking PCs. That's perfectly legal. They are trying to mislead customers. That's not legal. Apple paid a LOT of money for the iMac design. These others are stealing it, plain and simple, just like Smith & Wesson did with Glock.

This is tantamount to Microsoft selling Win98 in boxes featuring penguins and "Open Source" stickers. If you disagree with that, disagree with the eMachines crap.

Computers are only for smart people?

[DHartung]

Just a question. Is everybody's mother supposed to be a network engineer?

My thoughts exactly

[timur]

I was going to make a similar post, but yours is better. I agree with you 100% - Apple has no choice but to sue eMachines, otherwise their lawsuit against Future Power looks weak. They need to give the courts the opportunity to decide exactly what constitutes a rip-off. The iMac is unique - nothing before it looks even remotely similar.

If the iMac had been a market failure, then we wouldn't have any look-alikes. These two companies didn't come up with the idea themselves, yet they're trying to profit off of Apple's R&D.

This isn't "Look and Feel"...

[Millennium]

This is different. It's not about translucent plastics. It's not about colors It's not about the fact that the eOne is an inferior ripoff of the iMac (even though that fact is true). eMachines could quite easily have made their machine look like anything they wanted to. Even with translucent plastics and different colors. They chose instead to steal the design of the iMac, with no other purpose than to confuse the consumer. Apple wasn't right in the look-and-feel suit against MS (who the hell could confuse the obscene mess that is Windows with the Mac interface?) It's right this time, though.

Apple

[drwiii]

Another lawsuit, eh? I always wondered how Apple makes money these days..

Anyway, having demoed an eOne over the weekend, I can safely say that its only similarity to the iMac's case is the blue tint. What else can they sue over? Apple didn't invent the monitor-and-computer-and-other-stuff-in-case design. Just look at the Commodore PET.

Way to go, Apple! Sue over blue plastic!

Sidenote: The case wasn't the only thing that was blue.. The eOne demo machine I saw at Circus Shitty this past weekend kept giving a BSOD at boot time. Their excuse was, "It's really selling hot, this is our last in-house unit (as you can see)". Wonder how it'd do with another OS..

---

E-Machines admits it

[Lysander Luddite]

Check this out:
Donna Weinstein, a principal at the law firm of Fish & Richardson, says she was stunned when she read eMachines' rationale for its new product.

"An eMachines spokesperson said in the paper that it was hoping to trade off Apple's brand name. If I was their lawyer, I would have died when I read that," says Weinstein, who practices trademark litigation. She says it gives Apple a chance to charge eMachines with willful infringement. Apple did not return calls seeking comment.

from: http://fnews.yahoo.com/street/99/08/18/valley_9908 18.html

Ugh.

[Evro]

How about this. Ford "designs" a car that looks almost exactly like the Corvette. It has a different interior and the steering wheel's on the right side and it has a bigger engine. Oh, and a cup holder. But the body style is distinctly Corvette. Don't you think Chevy would complain? Don't you think they would have every right to?

I don't get why people seem to have this inbred hatred of Apple. First their open source efforts are just "not good enough" and now they fight to try and protect a design that has become their signature and they are some kind of pirates out to stop everybody from making computers to compete with iMac.

Listen, Apple is not doing anything wrong here. The eMachines computer was a clear design ripoff. Even the keyboard is practically identical. Like Jobs said, there were millions of designs they could have come up with, but instead they decided to copy a design Apple spent lots of money developing because it's a hot selling item. I don't see why people make Apple the bad guy here and simply exonerate eMachines from any wrongdoing. It's that "Apple Sucks" mentality that everybody seems to propagate, and these days it's really baseless, and very aggravating.

Re:Ugh.

[alhaz]

Car companies make cars that look like distinct ripoffs of other peoples cars all the time. It's no big deal.

The eOne definately doesn't look exactly like an imac. It looks like the iMac's inbred, retarded country cousin. A hackneyed immitation. Nobody is going to mistake this one.

It looks about as much like an iMac as a Mazda Miata looks like a Fiat Spider 2000. And Mazda has made no secret of their inspiration. People *Don't* get sued over this sort of thing in the "real world".

You would think Apple would have understood by now, they'v never won a look-and-feel case before, and aren't likely to win one in the future.

"Use it or lose it"

[G-Man]

I'm sure people are going to get in a huff about this, but it does make sense in light of trademark law. (We'll leave out the whole intellectual property debate for now.) Apple has already sued Future Power under 'trade dress' for what is most decidely an iMac ripoff.

Yeah, I don't think the eOne is a blatant ripoff, but it walks up to the line. Further, I think an eMachines spokesman told a reporter they were looking to trade on the brand name of the iMac (don't have the exact quote), which surely sent their legal department into conniption fits.

Since you *have* to defend your trademarks to keep them valid, I think Apple feels compelled to at least go through the motions regarding the eOne. Otherwise, Future Power can say "Hey, eMachines has a translucent blue all-in-one but they didn't get sued!"

My prediction: eOne gets settled out of court, while the Future Power never sees a store shelf.

Re:

[webslacker]

Because one ass cheek didn't know what the other ass cheek was up to in Xerox. They lost in court because Apple showed that they had a licensing agreement in the form of a stock offering. BTW, the same thing happened between Apple and Microsoft.

Consider the motivation...

[kvn]

I think Apple is cheesed off because the eMachine box costs $400 less, and has the added benefit of being a PC-compatible.

If you can't beat them, sue them...