This story about Apple having to apologise to or at least about Samsung has all been rather fun. The court mandated ads have been appearing in the UK papers this morning: here's a picture of the one in The Guardian. What's amusing about this is that this might be good enough: and it might not be. They might have to do it again and they might not.
As background, and in very simple terms, Apple has been intimating that Samsung copied the iPad registered design when making the Galaxy Tab. The courts in the UK took a rather dim view of this claim as they had ruled that Samsung had not so copied. And as is generally true in places with the rule of law what the judges say is the truth is the truth.
At which point the Court of Appeal (last one from the top in the English legal system) said that Apple must indeed apologise for having given this misleading impression. And then yesterday they ruled upon the matter again. Details of that are here. The short of that being that Apple wasn't taking its apology seriously and would have to do it all over again. At the order of the court and no dilly dally this time please.
Which is where I think this gets rather interesting. For that latest Court of Appeal ruling was only yesterday, at about lunchtime by the UK clocks. And here we have, in the next day's newspapers, the originally ordered newspaper ads. But this leaves us with the question: were the ads booked and written before or after that court ruling?
Sadly there's no point in my trying to talk to Apple UK. I also work for The Register as a freelance and there seems to be a general rule that Apple does not respond to information requests from anyone at The Register. At least no one in living memory can remember them doing so (slightly hyperbolic but not much). So I called The Guardian's ad department and I'm afraid we're really not sure.
The ad was booked yesterday. But that's only stating that it went onto the ad copy department's computer yesterday. It would have gone through a sales executive before being booked and who knows how long that process took? And of course the point is too trivial for it to be worth upending the newspaper to try and find out.
In theory the ad could have been booked at any time up to 4 pm yesterday. Although it's much more normal for them to be booked in the morning. So it's possible that the ad and the copy were drafted/booked after considering the impact of yesterday's court ruling. Or it could have been before. The only other piece of information we have is that Apple claimed in court yesterday that it would take them 14 days to change a web page. Whether that claim is true or not is another matter: but it would seem to indicate that their "we write the apologies" department isn't all that swift moving.
All of which leaves us with an entirely trivial even if possibly enjoyable point. Apple has indeed now taken out newspaper ads setting the record straight, as the court insisted they should. But they may or may not have drafted that apology in the light of yesterday's Court of Appeal ruling. Which means that there's a possibility that this is just fine and enough. And also a possibility that it isn't and that they're going to have to do it all again.
I agree: trivial. But fun if it does have to be redone, no?
Update: and a nice little piece of trivia. One of the pieces of evidence used against Apple in that second trial was a headline from that very The Register:
... the point of no return may well have been when Mr Carr [Samsung's counsel] produced an article from the highly respected online forum The Register (motto: "Biting the hand that feeds IT") commenting on the statement published by Apple, the headline of which read (or perhaps screamed) “APPLE: SCREW YOU, BRITS, everyone else says Samsung copied us … But we will apologise because the judge said we had to” … this probably simply confirmed the conclusions which the judges had already reached regarding the overall impression created by the statement. So a well-timed can of petrol, thrown on to the bonfire by Mr Carr, ensured that the nicely warming bonfire turned into a total conflagration.
You might be able to understand why Apple doesn't return calls from certain journalistic quarters.....
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