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More Legal Fun (3/25/98)
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Just when you thought it was safe to step out of the courtroom, Apple's gone and gotten slapped with another lawsuit. This one isn't just any lawsuit, though; this one's what is technically referred to in legal circles as a "doozy." Apple is being sued for patent infringement by some company named Imatec to the tune of $1.1 billion. That sounds like a ridiculous amount of cash, but the facts are plain as day in a Reuters column.
Imatec claims that Apple infringed on three of their patents in the making of the ColorSync color management software, which, if you were paying attention last week, you know that Apple has just announced will be made cross-platform in the near future. Sounds bad-- but a reader over at Mac OS Rumors provides a little background that puts things in a clearer light. Imatec is apparently a $2.5 million company that has a particularly shady past: they were reportedly busted in '96 for selling stock without registering with the state; they have reportedly never had any income; and they were reportedly buddy-buddy with the investment bank A. S. Goldmen, which was shut down by the federal goverment for fraud. So a $2.5 million medical imaging company that hasn't made any money suddenly files a $1.1 billion lawsuit against Apple for infringements in ColorSync-- when ColorSync has been around for several years now. Sound a little, shall we say, odd?
And in case you were wondering, our legal department informs us that the technical term for this particular type of doozy is "cheesy doozy," which we at AtAT had always assumed was actually a regional puffed-corn cheese-flavored snack popular with junk food mavens in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Just goes to show you how much they manage to cram into your head in law school.
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SceneLink (567)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/25/98 episode: March 25, 1998: Apple gets hit up for a wad of cash by a small company with a shady past. Meanwhile, Sun dances a little jig due to its early court victory over arch-nemesis Microsoft regarding the issue of contaminated Java, and Apple continues to prove that it has a deep psychological inability to ship a cheap Mac relative to the rest of the industry...
Other scenes from that episode: 568: Conservation of Energy (3/25/98) Of course, as everyone knows, the principles of Legal Physics dictate that litigious energy is neither created nor destroyed, but simply transferred from suit to suit. And so with the introduction of the scandalous $1.1 billion lawsuit against Apple, there comes a ruling in another case to even things out a little... 569: Missing the (Price) Point (3/25/98) Alas, poor Apple-- their tragic flaw is clearly their complete and utter inability to sell a computer at a "low" price point. Unless you've been living in a cave (in particular, a cave without net access), you've heard about Artemis, Apple's upcoming G3-based computer that was long rumored to cost $999 including a 15" monitor...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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