Mama always said that some folks
just never learn, and we reckon there's plenty of wisdom to be had from that very statement. Year
after year, German police are
called in to raid select booths at CeBIT (
and IFA, to be fair), and yet again we've seen a booth cleared out at the request of powerful lawyers from a few companies you may have heard of. Word on the street has it that Apple, Siemens and Sisvel were all kvetching over patent infringements made by an unnamed company exhibiting at last week's show, and within an hour or so of the fuzz showing up, the whole thing was stripped and a hefty fine (€10,000) was levied. Unfortunately, the exact details of who was violating what remains clouded in mystery, but for whatever reason, we get the feeling that something extremely similar will be going down in Hannover next year. We blame KIRFers determination.
Updated: Turns out one of our editors at CeBIT saw this whole situation go down at the
FirstView booth. Within minutes the entire booth was surrounded by the Polizei, and though we tried to dig further on the situation our inability to speak German caused some communication issues so we decided it best to move on to the next craptablet on the floor. We will, however, always have the shot above to remember the confusing experience.
[Thanks, TheLostSwede]
posted March 7th 2010 2:02PM
@sweet greggo Wow... click the source link... this isn't Engadget's story, they're just reporting it. The source, semiaccurate.com, covered the faces of the police and the manufacturer logo since they weren't sure what the laws were in Germany about that kind of thing.
@Electrofreak
Perhaps engadget should write a better synopsis then.
Who the hell are Meizu ?
@Threlly
The iPhones evil syster
It seems more likely this is an issue over a company using copyrights that aren't theirs than patents.
Perhaps it's more an issue of this company using something that is copyrighted to another company, just like last year?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/05/meizus-cebit-booth-shut-down-over-mp3-licensing-issues-not-the/
Excessive?!?!?
I think the CeBit organizers just shutting down the booth would have been more than adequate. This is clearly designed to send a message to the coporate world. "We A-hole patent whores will be the dirtiest nastiest fighters in our patent games."
Oh Apple, thanks for keeping my hate alive.
@espentan Presumably, you've got hate for Siemens and Sisvel as well. Funny how you managed to single out Apple for some hate. So sad.
@sonola777 ...Apple is run by a jealous sniveling wuss..
Its easy.
lolz
@John52
lulz
Looking at the advertising on the walls in this pic it looks like there is AsusTEK products such as the 1201N netbook for example. I wonder if this involved Asus at all???
@Cydoniac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoLIU2NI66w
I was there. This is completely ridiculous. Powerful European and US companies are simply removing Chinese innovators from the show floor for absolute bogus patent claims. Does it make sense to you that small Chinese companies should pay 14'000€ or whatever ridiculous amount to exhibit 4 days with some Mp3 players at a consumer electronics trade show?
Google definitely has to hurry and make patent-free next generation Ogg Theora based on VP6-7-8 the next standard of the industry and all the Chinese manufacturers can use that by default and have Mpeg1/2/4 unlocked by some other mechanisms just not on show-floors.
How can startups ever afford exhibit at tiny booths for such ridiculous $50'000 whatever prices? How can they compete with Apple, Intel and Microsoft and non-existant German consumer electronics companies?
@Charbax
well, thats true. They will always have enough cash to line up the lawyers to crush them.
@Charbax Chinese innovators? Thanks for the morning laugh!
@Charbax Then they should raid Coby's booth because they've got a Windows (CE?) laptop for $85 lol
The last straw the Industry is defending. Cheap is here to stay.
This kind of thing that kept new company from innovating.
Good to see this happening before products are actually sold. Stop the gangrene as soon as possible before it spreads. Sickening to think people are knowingly infringing on patents, not even trying to simply apply for a license.
I hope what will come out of this is actual innovations from the Chinese. Too bad they haven't figured out what people actually want.
What's the deal with SemiAccurate? How does a guy with a PRESS badge (presumably some sort of reporter, yes?) agree to NOT publish the name of a company getting raided simply because someone in the booth asks him to. Can "reporting" get any worse?
@appsman if you read the article, it seems the author is pretty skittish about a lawsuit, either from the manufacturer or maybe a fine from German police. Sounds like decided to release the story quickly instead of reading up on German law.
China's economy has sure done terribly without IP right legislation ;)
The bad thing is in Germany they protect companies from media scrutiny one of the reason why it is so easy to get so easily screwed by companies here is they know that nobody can say their name or really out the wrongs they do.
It's the FirstView booth. Really a shame because they might have brought lower cost devices in. Maybe not top quality, but enough to give others with overly high prices pause.
I feel bad for the employees that was manning the both that had no clue of what the top dogs in the company did... Got to suck for them.
This happens every year at the Hannover Trade Show I go to for automation in April....the German company I work for is the one getting copied all the time so I'm pretty aware also how serious the Germans are about intellectual property.
Can they really call in the police for patent violations in Germany? That really surprises me. Did a judge order the takedown, and was FirstView allowed to defend itself before its booth was vandalized? In other industrialized countries, you'd have to file suit in a court of law to do something like that.
F#CK Apple... Jobs can lick a scrotum..
10,000 isn't even a spit in the eye. You'd have to blow in my ear to make me care less about patent infringement.
Enough of the 'craptablet' comments already. Seems that unless it is the iPad or some other expensive tablet then it is crap. It seems that for the price a lot of these other tablets are actually pretty good.
You could say that netbooks are 'crap' because they don't have the speed or build quality of $800 laptops, but for the price I think most agree they are quite good at doing the jobs they were intended for - the same goes for cheaper tablets.
Use your BRAIN. You could have recorded it and dictated via translator.
Also, I See three chinese in the photo.
Remember, in Germany, to get the Polizei's attention, all you need are two words: "sig" and "heil" in one sentence.
Fucking nazis.