Apple fans know how important it is to stay on the cutting edge of style. If fashion weren't a driving force, we'd all be satisfied with beige boxes instead of lusting over the colorful translucent swoops and curves of the iMac or the current Power Mac G3-- and web column material is subject to the rules of fashion, too. De rigueur just a couple of weeks ago, rebuttals of John Dvorak's "girly iBook" article are now passé, and writing one will fetch you more than a few comments along the lines of "that is so August 10th." Nope, the topic du jour is now whether or not Apple should be suing companies that manufacture and sell designer imposters: cheap Wintel systems that obviously try to look like the iMac. It seems everyone's got an opinion about Apple's suits against Future Power and eMachines, which allege intellectual property rights violations in the designs of each company's respective knock-offs.

Some people say hey, sue away-- the iMac's distinctive look and feel is an Apple property and there's no reason to let other companies crash the party and mooch all the punch. But nearly as many people-- Mac fans included-- seem to think that the copycats are well within their rights, that iMac clones are inevitable, and Apple has better things to spend its time and money on than what some people have deemed to be "frivolous" lawsuits. Opinions are like spleens; pretty much everyone's got one. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen one on TV. And if that's not impressive enough for you, there's an intellectual property lawyer in the next room watching Bob Barker give away fabulous prizes right this second, so sheer proximity must make me at least a quasi-expert. Legally, I think that Apple can win both suits due to trade dress violation and dilution.

The trade dress issue involves the fact that Apple's spent lots of money and resources designing, marketing, and advertising a distinctive product-- and now other companies are trying to piggyback off that effort and sell their own similar-looking goods. (Honestly, the iMac is a cultural icon now-- who can look at an eOne or an E-Power without thinking "iMac"? Really?) The dilution thing is perhaps vaguer, but it seems to go something like this: Apple has sunk a lot of money and resources into building a really strong brand, and now the advent of knock-offs from other companies is weakening that brand. That's my not-a-lawyer take on things. And beyond that, according to a MacWEEK column, eMachines actually claims that they came up with the design for the eOne before the iMac was released-- which is either a baldfaced lie (as in, it's a total coincidence that the two products look similar), or they came up with it in the three months after the iMac was unveiled and before it hit retail shelves. Either way, it's a slimy thing to argue, and we say fry 'em. ;-)