Shuffle clone maker sues Apple
p2pnet.net News:- Apple has yet another lawsuit on its hands, and this time it’s a claim for lost sales.
An Apple product manager was “visibly distraught” when Luxpro, the Taiwanese maker of an iPod Shuffle clone, opened a stall at at the CeBit technology show in Germany in 2005 and, “This should be interesting given Apple`s hard-core policy of suing even its friends,” said p2pnet at the time.
Apple followed up its manager’s distress by suing LuxPro. And now LuxPro is going after Apple.
“We plan to sue Apple in a Taiwanese court before the end of the month and demand $100m in compensation for the revenues we have lost due to their abuse of their global power,” Wu Fu-chin, Luxpro chairman, told The Financial Times.
“When the company started selling the player, it changed its name to Super Tangent and added a Luxpro logo to the front,” says the story, going on:
“However, in spite of the name change, in July 2005 Apple asked the Shihlin District Court in Taipei for an injunction that would ban Luxpro from manufacturing or selling the product. The injunction was granted a month later.
“Luxpro appealed and won subsequent lawsuits in the Taiwan High Court and the Taiwan Supreme Court. Last month, the Shihlin District Court lifted the original injunction, saying that ‘the appearances of the two products are significantly dissimilar’.”
Apple is also currently being sued by Melanie Tucker, a disenchanted iPod user who says Apple violates anti-trust laws by refusing to allow music bought in its iTunes store to be played on any digital music player besides the iPod.
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Also See:
visibly distraught – Apple ‘distraught’ over iPod copy, March 14, 2005
hard-core policy – Blatant iPod Shuffle rip-off, March 10, 2005
The Financial Times – Luxpro to countersue Apple for $100m, January 4, 2007
disenchanted iPod user – Apple ‘monopoly’ case rolls on, January 4, 2007
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