Apple finally setting its legal sights on the HiPhone?
By Ryan Block 
posted May 11th 2008 4:37AM
posted May 11th 2008 4:37AM
[Thanks, Ricardo]
Update: Reader Ben W hooked us up with a translation of the letter; we can't vouch for its veracity, but it's posted after the break if you want to check it out. Thanks, Ben!
Engaged on behalf of Apple Inc., 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California 95014, USA
1. In order to avoid a contractual penalty in the order of €25,000.00 for every case of contravention, introduction of multifunctional portable mobile radio devices as per subsequent reports in the European Economic Area, for the purpose of offering them for distribution in the European Economic Area and/or to sell and/or to share one of these aims:
2. altogether other within the European Economic Area in his/her indirect or direct property operating apparatuses and/or duplicate apparatuses defined in item 1 has until [blank] May, 2008 to destroy the apparatuses and notify the solicitors Bird & Bird in Dusseldorf without delay with appropriate written proof;
3. to inform Apple Inc. by way of the solicitors Bird & Bird in Dusseldorf until the [blank] May, 2008 that the following information was brought;
3.1. to which extent he/she fabricated multifunction mobile radio devices in a configuration as defined in item 1 reproduced in the European Economic Zone alone or via a third party, to tender and/or distribute, and admittedly under specification individual production, offer and delivery, respectively by method, time and price as well as name and address of the recipient offer and/or supply as well as under specification respective turnover and initial costs, to break down individual cost factors, and under specification at this accrued profit, moreover also under information the extent for such mobile radio devices to pursue advertising under information of the advertising expense (including eBay and other Internet platforms), broken down by advertising medium, their circulation levels, range of distribution and distribution time;
3.2. over the origin and the channel of distribution of the mobile radio devices reproduced according to item 1, and admittedly under specification of the name and address of the original equipment manufacturer, the vendors and other previous holders of the objects, their commercial consumers or clients as per the amount produced, delivered, received or ordered materials;
4. to compensate Apple Inc. for the costs of the solicitation of the solicitors Bird & Bird, and admittedly by lawful scale of charges pursuant to German solicitors commissioning laws in an amount of €2,000,000 and in an amount of 1.8-corporate tax plus expenses, a total of €13,512.80, payable until [blank] May, 2008 to the attention of solicitors Bird & Bird in their account [intentionally omitted] at the Deutschen Bank Dusseldorf, bank identification number 300 700 24, under specification for the intended purpose "APPCO-0137B-008-RDI";
5. Apple Inc. altogether retains the right to impose further penalties, as specified in items 1 and/or 4 if the indicated actions have arisen and/or will arise.
Hi
Hello waste of space, how are you?
@ Kizorblade,
Calm down, there's nothing wrong with saying hi
Seeing as half these posts are off topic, I would just like to say that the anti-wrinkle ad on the right hand side of the site is not only utterly unrealistic, but quite frankly very disturbing.
Bi.
@Esat
To continue our off topic comment. I wonder, as a reader of Engadget, why on earth you aren't using FireFox with AdBlock to prevent such comments.
I have considered it but very seldomly I see useful adverts that direct me to products that I am actually interested it. Therefore I must face teh consequences :)
LOL, they have the SCIPHONE / hiphone 2 now... with java, shake control.. etc... they can all they want, but they got to either become more competitive or surrender... china will not quite... better yet, could move production to VIETNAM... duh.. http://www.chinagrabber.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1607
Hey, sup?
How is it going?
I'm typing this from my HiPhone.
It just wanna say hi to iphone
Har har.
I'm from germany, so I'll try a quick'n'dirty translation:
This paper says that HiPhone is no longer being allowed to be sold on the european market. If not, the company has to pay a fine of 25,000€. Also, every HiPhone that is not already sold has to be destroyed to the given date, and a proof of destruction has to be handed out to apple until that date.
wooo, have to be destroyed!?
well they should keep it out of the EU and sell it on ebay.
the important part would be that it is 24K for every phone, not just once.
24k? Try 40K. Unless you were trying to say 25k and leave it in Euros.
Shouldn't it be 'setting'? Proof read please :)
You can prove it yourself. Right after the first date mentioning, the word "zerstören" appears. Go to dict.leo.org and type it in. It means destruct/destroy
woops... s/zerstören/vernichten , still the same meaning.
Thanks for the mentioning, guys. I've also written an english post about it on http://www.toomuchvodka.com/apple-suing-private-hiphone-seller-for-25000e.html if you feel rather confortable reading something in english... I mean, german is not easy at all :P
If you ask me, Apple should get much more aggressive with all these knockoff-ers (is that a word?). Everybody has the right-- and arguably the duty-- to litigate against patent and trademark violators. Yes, even the big rich companies.
And this copycat is absolutely ridiculous. They're making an incredibly concerted effort to fool people into thinking this is the real thing. Frankly, I can't believe this thing. How can companies get away with stuff like this?!
OK, there's my rant.
I believe it should be knockers-off, but I'm not gonna talk sematics here.
As for the phone, come on people, humanity didn't progress by copying, so either start making new completely new products or make substantial improvements to existing ones
Well, they all come from China, a country not exactly well-known for having IP laws. I'd franly rather buy a clone. They have better hardware (dual-SIM for one, better camera for another, also, how about video recording?) if not software (well, some are iPhone theme on Windows Mobile- those are good).
When you are an American conmpany who hires slave labor - in a communist country that doesn't respect your copyrights - and your own government is doing NOTHING to protect your intellectual property, YES, CHINA CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS.
What's the American Government going to do? Threaten to stop selling China its NATIONAL DEBT?
OMG.... Flashpoint actually said something with which I agree.
Basically, it says that the distributor agrees to desist from importing, distributing or being in possession of the device for the above purposes within the EU and further agrees to destroy all previously distributed devices, provided Apple's legal representatives with "suitable" proof of same.
Each transgression of the agreement will cost the distributor €25k. And don't forget that under German law, the legal costs are based on the nominal value of the damages, proposed by the plaintiffs' lawyers and agreed to by the court
is that the iphone knokoff that was available at MediaMarkt / Saturn in Germany?
I saw those lately and was quite shocked, that those are publicly lying in (AFAIK) the biggest Electronic Stores in Germany...
Cheers,
Markus
There's pretty much no regulation of intellectual property that doesn't come from within the border. But part of that is because nobody sells there, and thus the cycle continues.
Anyway, it is now the goodbyephone. Sorry.
Double-clicking is not allowed on the internets.
There's pretty much no regulation of intellectual property that doesn't come from within the border. But part of that is because nobody sells there, and thus the cycle continues.
Anyway, it is now the goodbyephone. Sorry.
Apple gives the HiPhone the Bird! Or Birds in this case.
Definately the best and cheapest knock off. But who wants an asian knock off with 512mb of memory... by the time you pay for the 8GB of space, might aswell just get a good quality iPhone.
And yet I see no mention of selling the iPhone there. Take your useless crap elsewhere.
HiPhone.......ByePhoney. I hope Apple can make some money from suing these companies, otherwise it would seem to be a waste of legal expense.
That HiPhone may look similar, but it probably works like a piece of zune since it doesn't use OSX.
speaking of knock-offs, what happened to meizu?
how hard is it for engadget to get a german engadget fan who speaks english to translate for these types of stories, geez!
It has been translated at least twice in the comment section........
Yip correct translation. I speak German to a certain extent too so, from what I can tell, that's all correct. Don't worry, I won't throw a translation into the pot too. Pretty sad knock off though. Who would buy one?
indeed... toomuchvodka.com... i saw your article in digg.... engadget cherry picks articles from from dig...but the Scipone is hott!
once again I need to point you all in the direction of the iFone...
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11332
- or -
http://www.dealextreme.com/search.dx/search.iFone
I say we should all go to jail for being interested in such an illegal product and worship Apple for the rest of our lives.