English: A cut apple (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I'm grateful to a couple of readers for pointing out the back story to Apple's recent apology, ordered by the UK Courts. Some readers objected that the UK court was deliberately trying to humiliate Apple and Apple therefore was right now to comply with its orders.
The back story shows Apple in a less than flattering light, though I think there are still errors in the account.
Here's part of it- if you have anything to add or clarify, please do!
From Richard: Many people fail to remember that Apple openly committed libel against Samsung by issuing various retailers and suppliers thinly veiled threats that they should stop selling and distributing certain Samsung products because they were in violation of the law.
I asked Richard for a bit more detail and he referred me to this letter. However, the letter looks as though it refers to US retailers only so it would be irrelevant to the UK courts. Richard - do you have anything to add?
A more telling part of the back story comes from John Chang who points out that the UK courts were angry that Apple had used a German judgment in their favor alongside the UK judgment, attempting to diminish the significance of the English judgment.
The UK Appeals court drew attention to this and the act that the German court had no jurisdiction in the case. Here's what one UK judge had to say:
Finally I should say something about the 24th July decision of the Oberlandesgericht which held that the 7.7 infringed and granted a pan-EU injunction against SEC from selling it. Firstly I cannot understand on what basis the Court thought it had jurisdiction to grant interim relief.
Firstly it is common ground that no German court was “ first seized” of the claim for a declaration of non-infringement. Indeed given that Apple withdrew its claim for infringement in Germany, no German court appears even now to be seized of a claim for infringement.
In other words, in the EU when one country makes a judgment on patent issues, it is normally considered a precedent (first seized) for other courts. And it seems Apple was aware of this, though if I were Apple I'd happily claim ignorance.
That seems to clear up why the courts were angry with Apples behavior and why the case remains very poor reputation management by Apple. Anyone have anything to add?
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