Apple Plays Hide and Seek with the English Courts
US / UK Apple site
Apple changes wording of court decision then hides legal apology from its homepage.
After a British court decision, Apple was forced to run ads in the UK press saying that Samsung did not copy its iPads. The Apple ad states that the Samsung’ Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 did not infringe on Apple designs, according to High Court and Court of Appeal rulings.
Apple was also required to quote the court decisions on its homepage. On 25 October 2012, Apple put a link on its homepage to some of the legal text from the court decisions, but added another pieces of information, such as references from UK court hearings saying Samsung products were not as cool as theirs.
The English courts were not happy. They ordered Apple to publish an official apology saying: “Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website in relation to Samsung’s Galaxy tablet computers. That statement was inaccurate and did not comply with the order of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.”
Apple said they need fourteen days to post that message. The judge gave them 24 hours, also ordering that the apology should be printed in Arial 11-pt font.
What did Apple do? They did publish the apology, but it cannot be seen on their homepage without scrolling down. They finished in 24 hours, as all they needed was a short javascript. Petty, but passable provided the judge did not mention the text should appear without scrolling. Anyways, knowing the two tech giants involved, this is not the end of the legal and PR war.
However, it surprises us that copyright laws are not universal. Courts in the United States and Germany claimed that Samsung indeed stole the concept for its tablets from Apple iPads. England is different, they drive on the left side, drink tea with milk and think that Samsung tablets are not copied.
We think that Apple should have put the effort it spent on legal battles and other unproductive stuff in real product development. Then the new iPhone 5 casinos might have some real new features, not just a different screen size.
