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Last year, Apple’s lawyers sent Henrik Huseby, the owner of a small electronics repair shop in Norway, a letter demanding that he immediately stop using aftermarket iPhone screens at his repair business and that he pay the company a settlement.
Norway’s customs officials had seized a shipment of 63 iPhone 6 and 6S replacement screens on their way to Henrik’s shop from Asia and alerted Apple; the company said they were counterfeit.
In order to avoid being sued, Apple asked Huseby for “copies of invoices, product lists, order forms, payment information, prints from the internet and other relevant material regarding the purchase [of screens], including copies of any correspondence with the supplier … we reserve the right to request further documentation at a later date.”
The letter, sent by Frank Jorgensen, an attorney at the Njord law firm on behalf of Apple, included a settlement agreement that also notified him the screens would be destroyed. The settlement agreement said that Huseby agrees “not to manufacture, import, sell, market, or otherwise deal with any products that infringe Apple’s trademarks,” and asked required him to pay 27,700 Norwegian Krone ($3,566) to make the problem go away without a trial.
“Intellectual Property Law is a specialized area of law, and seeking legal advice is in many instances recommended,” Jorgensen wrote in the letter accompanying the settlement agreement. “However, we can inform you that further proceedings and costs can be avoided by settling the case.”
Huseby decided to fight the case.
“That’s a letter I would never put my signature on,” Huseby told me in an email. “They threw all kinds of claims against me and told me the laws and acted so friendly and just wanted me to sign the letter so it would all be over. I had a good lawyer that completely understood the problem, did good research, and read the law correctly.”
Apple sued him. Local news outlets reported that Apple had five lawyers in the courtroom working on the case, but Huseby won. Apple has appealed the decision to a higher court; the court has not yet decided whether to accept the appeal.
[...] The specifics of Huseby’s case won’t matter for American repair shops, but that Apple continues to aggressively pursue a repair shop owner over 63 iPhone screens signals that Apple is not interested in changing its stance on independent repair, and that right to repair activists and independent repair companies should expect a long fight ahead of them: “I feel that this case was extremely important for them to win,” Huseby said.
He just hopes to get back to his shop, he told me.
“I will continue to repair iPhone like I did before, no change,” he said. “I’m glad I now don’t have to be afraid of importing compatible spare parts for iPhone again.”
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:35PM (3 children)
Yeah believe me I know you can get a genuine GM thermostat that runs for a decade or a no-name that needs replacing every two years, or a factory battery that lasted the first six years and replacements that only last three years. Don't get me started on exhaust systems, apparently only factories can make exhaust systems that last longer than three years.
But the general point stands, given that we're only provided with a very carefully edited story from only one perspective, there's probably another side of the story we have not been permitted to read and in my experience at least in some fields, as sort of a bulk discount deal, vendors will provide a much better contracted price if you're willing to give something up in exchange, like single sourcing from them or a contractual declaration you'll never buy gray market or some foolishness about licensing or whatever. The point is they give you money (or take less) in exchange for jumping some hoops. Even if the hoops are stupid, the money was real enough. And its not even remotely controversial that supply contracts have punishment clauses that boil down to if you break the contract or lie, you owe a fat stack of cash, and this guy went judicial to get out of living up to his fair share of the contract.
I would fall out of my chair if the "whole story" was apple's refund/reimbursement check bounced or they denied his contractual discount on the P.O. so he felt released from his own contractual obligations. How could something like that be missed in a story, no matter how biased it might be portrayed? AFAIK apple lived up to its side of the supply contract. Did this dude? I'm guessing reading between the lines its somewhere between "its complicated" and "hell no".
Sure monopolies suck, but a good analogy is you sign up for a monopoly cable modem internet access, then use it to send spam so they disconnect you, then get a judge to reinstate service despite the spam solely on the argument that monopolies suck so nobody should have to follow any contractual obligation of any sort, eh I'm unimpressed with that argument.
Regardless how much monopolies suck, if you freely and willfully enter into a deal with a monopoly, if they follow the written contract you shouldn't screw them over just because they're a monopoly and monopolies suck so you should be free to use the contract as toilet paper. Somebody is breaking the rules in this story, and for once it ain't the monopoly AFAIK.
This is also shitty anti-monopoly propaganda. If, like myself, you don't like monopolies, then providing the weakest imaginable argument against them is darn near propaganda in support of monopolies; this story (story in the sense of the greater narrative of events, not in the small scale of Fnord666's efforts) is just awful.
I mean, simplifying this to playground level argument, it boils down to if you freely make a fair agreement with someone that people don't like, you should be free to fuck them over when you want without consequences solely because they are disliked, and this is somehow good.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:49PM
Maybe you should find a cite for this other side of the story you seem to desperately wish existed.
(Score: 1) by Stardaemon on Wednesday April 18 2018, @06:19AM (1 child)
If you click " but Huseby won [documentcloud.org]" in the summary (or here), you'll get one link to a text version and one to a pdf.
That's about as much of the "whole story", as you can reasonably expect.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 18 2018, @11:55AM
I don't read that language, so ...