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Mac DVD-ROM: Lawsuit Ho! (11/21/00)
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Admit it: you miss the litigational hijinks of that jolly old Imatec ColorSync lawsuit. The thrill of the hunt, the smell of a frivolous lawsuit, a few billion bucks on the line, the constant inane Hanoch Shalit press releases... what's not to love? And then it was all taken away from us last January when a judge pretty much laughed in Imatec's face. Well, fret not, true believers, because it sounds like Apple may be on the receiving end of another patent infringement case any day now. Sure, it won't be quite as goofy, but it does hold some promise to be a rollicking courtroom drama in its own right-- and this time, it's a star-studded extravaganza.
According to Macworld, this time the litigant isn't some two-bit fly-by-night "company" with no products or income. Instead, Apple faces a suit from a "seven-strong industry group" comprising such heavy-hitters as JVC and Matsushita, who allege that the company infringed its patents by shipping Macs with certain DVD-ROM drives installed. See, apparently the DVD-ROM drives in question use patented MPEG compression technologies that were never licensed by the drive manufacturer. "So what?" you ask. "Shouldn't the patent holders sue the drive manufacturer instead of suing Apple?" Well, yeah, that sounds more logical, but considering that Compaq just got sued for the same exact infraction last week, Apple may still face a courtroom showdown.
So far, Apple (as well as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, who are also in the same boat) has only been slapped with a warning letter, not a lawsuit. But seeing as Compaq now faces a $60 million suit for, as The Register reports, "refusing to license" the patented MPEG technologies, if Apple refuses to cough up the dough, we figure it's only a matter of time before the lawyers come a-runnin'. So settle back and reach for the popcorn, because it sounds like Apple's legal team may soon have a defensive challenge to tackle in its inimitable fashion.
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SceneLink (2693)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 11/21/00 episode: November 21, 2000: Intel hits 1.5 GHz, but given the Pentium 4's real-world performance, the war's not over yet. Meanwhile, an iMac with a much larger screen surfaces on eBay, and a coalition of seven heavy-hitters targets Apple for a patent infringement lawsuit...
Other scenes from that episode: 2691: A Treatment For MHz-Envy (11/21/00) So is anybody tallying the official death toll now that Intel's lapped Motorola twice around the racetrack? Because we can only assume that being maxed out at 500 MHz (two processors notwithstanding) while the Pentium 4 is now allegedly shipping in 1.4 and 1.5 GHz flavors has driven at least a few of the long-suffering Mac faithful to untimely ends, either by their own hands or just by the sheer crushing shame of it all... 2692: Why Settle For 17 Inches? (11/21/00) Most people who have watched the iMac slide in the sales ratings over the course of the past year or so attribute its reduced popularity to a number of factors (seemingly low clock speed, no CD-R), but probably none more so than screen size...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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