iPhone Skin Ripped Off
It didn’t take long for the iPhone skin to be ripped and ported to other devices. Steve Jobs and Co. are irate seeing the iPhone skin on the Windows mobile and palm-based smart phones. If the forums hosting the iPhone skins (brighthand and xda developers) don’t remove them, then Apple will most likely commence proceedings. Lawyers are already rubbing their hands.
These skins don’t offer an functionality, but just portray the Apple trademark on non-Apple devices. Whilst it is illegal to use intellectual rights without permission, having the iPhone user-interface (UI) on non-Apple products just ads to the hype and helps with more free promotion of the iPhone. Really, the guys at Apple should be ecstatic about it all.
Bloggers at Risk
Apple is flexing their muscles rather a bit too much by also sending letters from lawyers to journalists who have reported on the fact that these skins are available. Let’s hope we don’t get any letters here.
This is not the first time that Apple is attacking individual bloggers for revealing trade secrets. A lawsuit was made in 2004 claiming that three bloggers had revealed trade secrets of an unreleased Apple product. Apple won the case, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organisation representing bloggers, placed an appeal and later got the ruling overturned. It was ruled that bloggers are not professional journalists protected by the First Amendment rights. Apple then dropped the case rather than taking it to the Supreme Court.
