Apple Files Lawsuit Against Teenager Who Sold White iPhone 4 Conversion Kits, Settlement Reached?

[maclaptop]

Apple

THE Biggest Bully On The Block.

Nothing like using their intelligence to work something out with the "perp".

Oh hell no... sue the crap outta anyone and everyone.

I wonder what drives all this rage on Apple's part.

 

[Tesseract]

AGREED

Be reasonable here apple this guy saw the parts realised that apple wasn't gonna release the white iphone for a while and grabbed a business opportunity. Yes he sold unauthorised parts but maybe instead of suing him he obviously is good at business affairs maybe he could be employed by apple instead of being sued. If you are going to sue him don't involve his parents even though they'll end up paying probably it's his problem he has to get out of it

They weren't unauthorized. They were Apple's own parts stolen from their own factory.

Why is this so hard for people to understand? Read the article. The kid was trafficking in stolen goods. Apple should just let people steal over 100k of goods from them?

 

[frankjl]

NO excuse, do the crime , do the time, a crime is a crime at any age, ever hear of consequences for your actions

Something tells me that you hate/hated/ dislike microsoft because of the same action they took back in the 90's to protect their trademark.

I wonder if you said the same thing about them.

 

[L I G H T I N G]

I don't have kids. I hope, when I do have kids, I will be aware of the things that they are doing and I also hope that I teach them to respect certain boundaries and consequences. But who knows; it's easy to say that now.

Kids have gotten up to a lot worse than what this kid did and I don't feel that we should be sympathetic to corporate interests (I'm also not saying that he should have been allowed to continue his operation.) When people at Foxconn off themselves (in numbers!) you get this "not our (or Apple's) fault" BS, but if you import discarded OEM goods then you're trafficking in stolen goods. I like how the responsibility is a one way street. Apparently a respect for human life ends at our borders, but respect for patent law is another subject altogether. The hypocrisy suggests a lot about what's left of our so-called values.

I know that I won't be teaching my kids that sort of moral "objectivity," if nothing else.

You are correct to a certain extent, there are much more kids drinking and doing drugs at a younger age but there are still people that major aspirations. Like the kid who made profit from these cases, there are many more with good intentions and want to get in to top tier colleges.

Apple is a major company, this would not cut in to profits much, Apple could have settled since by requesting the profits back yet they bring this to court and try to lock a kid in jail. Apple is being too harsh on a kid, a 30 - 40 year old doing this , yeah i understand , many con artists out there.

A lawsuit is unnecessary in this case, if Apple didnt have a monopoly on personal media players , i wouldnt even purchase from them. All my computers are from Microsoft and since no other company has a comparable itouch device, i support Apple through that one product although i might stop buying further apple devices all together.

 

[Jaredly]

Say you've got an apple orchard with a reputation of having the tastiest apples because you only select the best and toss the rest.

Say someone sneaks in and steals the best of the discarded apples and I buy them from the thief.

Now, if I set up a stand and say "These apples are from Farmer Jaredly's farm" and start selling a lot of apples and make a lot of money by capitalizing on your reputation, what is your response?

You're telling me that you wouldn't have a problem with me associating second-rate apples with your brand? What if people didn't like "my" Jaredly apples because they weren't first-rate and thus either complained to you or stopped buying from you?

You also wouldn't be mad that I was making profits from your goods that you had discarded, despite the fact that you'd done all the work to grow them as well?

You make an excellent point. I never really thought of it in that light

 

[DeanSolecki]

You make an excellent point. I never really thought of it in that light

No one would have thought they were buying Apple authorized parts. They would have known they were knock-off or unauthorized. Terrible point.

 

[Blorzoga]

What @$$holes!! I feel bad for the kid, he was smart enough to bring it to market before apple could. Hope it works out okay for him.

Smart enough to bring it to market? Are you serious? The parts were STOLEN from Apple's manufacturing plant and sold by the kid. What part of "illegal" don't you understand?

 

[Stevamundo]

Oh you made $130,000 by obtaining parts illegally and you infringed on a company's trademark......ya better not do it again, I'm warning you!

Have you heard of our legal system? You need to grow up.

Have you ever heard of compassion?

What I find most hilarious about this is that if Microsoft did this most of you would be condemning Microsoft from here to damnation. What hypocrites. LOL!

Trust me, I'm a big Apple fan and I dislike Microsoft.

 

[DarkHeraldMage]

This thread is ridiculous. People are standing up for a thief and proposing that instead of being punished he should get a job out of this? That's he's so good at marketing that he should be brought on board and rewarded?

By that token, when Sony find out who hacked the information from their servers, they should just say "job well done" and hire the hackers to handle their security since obviously they're so good at circumventing it.

The thought process (or lack thereof) evidenced on this thread is mind numbing. Being 17 doesn't make him immune to the law. Because Apple's a multi billion dollar company means they should overlook it? What if he'd stolen incoming goods from a local "mom and pop" grocery store and then sold the groceries in his own store around the corner? Would it be more deplorable and worth punishment since he'd stolen from someone who didn't have it to spare? If I rob someone on welfare I should go to jail, but if I rob a wealthy business owner I should be reprimanded with a verbal warning and sent on my way? The insistence on differentiation is ridiculous.

You steal, you get punished. This kid didn't steal bread to feed his family. He stole a product from a company and made over $130,000 re-selling it to others. Why do so many people here think that's okay?

Edit: And just for the record, if Microsoft did the same thing I'd be supporting them as well. This isn't about the Apple brand, this is about right vs wrong. The kid was wrong, there's no way around it.

 

[Heilage]

I rarely side with Apple, but in this case the kid actually sold (and made a profit) stolen goods. That's illegal. Quite simple.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Actually maybe the kid is the next Steve Jobs. He took the first step and was a genius.

True. Didn't Steve and Steve make their first computer with "borrowed" parts?

 

[DiamonDecoden]

Bad Situation For Both

What the kid did was wrong. His ideas and entrepreneurship spirits have good potential if it's ethical. I admit I feel bad for the kid b/c of this situation.

Also, Apple was faced with a difficult situation since they are dealing with a teenager (not quite adult). They needed to set a precedent just in case someone else might attempt to re-create this but they don't want to seem like the "harsh" guy and bring in bad publicity. I guess it's the best move for Apple to just dismiss the case, forfeit all the profit, reimburse the cost of this case.

It's really a shame that the kid didn't use his talents and knowledge to do something legit.

 

[wordoflife]

I feel bad for the kid but I think he definitely owes Apple. Unfortunately for him, this is the only way how it can be done.

 

[inkswamp]

Apple

THE Biggest Bully On The Block.

Nothing like using their intelligence to work something out with the "perp".

Oh hell no... sue the crap outta anyone and everyone.

I wonder what drives all this rage on Apple's part.

And I wonder what drives people to comment on articles they've clearly not read.

 

[SchneiderMan]

That's way too harsh of Apple to do this. They should have only sent the kid a cease and desist as soon as they found out. Woz even bought his white conversion from the poor kid, I mean come on!!

 

[flameproof]

He's only a teenager

This could be a mitigating factor, but not a defense.

To claim openly to trade in stolen goods is more then stupid.

 

[roadbloc]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)



I made it lose a bar by cupping the phone really tight in both my hands. Is that it? But I always move between 4-5 bars anyway. Even if I'm down to only 2 bars I can still make calls.

So where's the problem?

*LTD*... chill, it was a joke. But since you're on the topic, I can easily loose all my signal on my iPhone by gripping it in a normal fashion like I would do with any phone. My area hasn't got the best signal coverage, but I've never had a phone which drops signal as bad.

Not a major problem. I just hold it differently.

 

[rdowns]

Actually maybe the kid is the next Steve Jobs. He took the first step and was a genius.

Get real. The kid didn't build or create anything. He sold STOLEN parts.

 

[Winni]

Some of you guys here behave like the Holy Inquisition -- every defendant is guilty by your very definition and you don't even need to know any facts for it. It's enough that the Holy Church of Apple has filed a lawsuit against somebody.

Do you even know that the kid knew that those parts were stolen? Were they even stolen? The only thing that we know from the article is that the kid bought those parts from a Foxconn employee. Unless the kid really knew that those were stolen goods, he didn't do anything illegal by buying those parts. And why should he suspect that the parts weren't legit? All he knew is that they were produced by Foxconn and sold to him by a Foxconn employee. Now if a Coca Cola employee would want to sell you Coca Cola, do you automatically expect that his commodity would be illegal? I doubt it.

So unless the kid knew for certain that this Foxconn employee sold him stolen goods, he didn't do anything wrong. And even if an official told him that those were stolen goods, than a) the kid would only have to return those goods to Foxconn and b) he could sue the thief to get his money back. But the kid would NOT be guilty of any crime. This is what we call "Treu und Glauben" in German legal terms - I don't know if you Americans have a counterpart for it or what you call it.

Now Apple sued him for using their trademarks. I must be cynical here, but will Apple also sue me the next time I will sell my used Apple products on eBay? This is just pathetic.

If your American legal system wasn't so corrupted, this thing would never even come to court.

I don't know what I find more disgusting - Apple suing a teenager or people who think it's a good thing that a multi-billion-dollar corporation like Apple is suing a teenager for selling scrap parts with an Apple logo on them.

Oh, and the reference to Psystar that somebody made earlier in this thread: It's a completely different thing and doesn't even remotely belong in this context. But anyway. Apple still hasn't sued any of the European companies that sell standard PCs with Mac OS X pre-installed, because Apple knows that their restrictive EULA is not enforceable by European laws and that they wouldn't have a case against those companies. In Germany, it's fully legal to install a retail version of Mac OS X on a regular PC and Apple's EULA is legally null and void. Copyright laws still apply, of course, but you are not violating copyright laws by installing a retail version of some software on your computer.

 

[satcomer]

So, you like me for supporting the trafficking in stolen goods? I think you need to reword that.
No. I'm not in the mob.

I think your reading comprehension needs polishing. I was making fun of your seemly rooting for someone trafficking stolen goods because the story has the word "kid" in it. Your blind support of such scant information tells me that you jump to conclusion and put in your blind hatred of a Apple.

Plus you seem don't have any sense of humor. I was pointing out your ridiculous post and making fun of it.

 

[caspersoong]

Wonder how many more White iPhone 4s would have sold if this had not happened.

 

[saxofunk]

I have to agree with Winni

This is ridiculous. There were tons of opportunities (during that time) to buy white iPhone 4 parts from any number of suppliers. Of course they had the  on them, they were replacement parts. If I bought a replacement toyota badge from a junk yard - or an auto parts dealer, is toyota going to sue them for trademark infringement? No. Now you can buy red, blue, and pink iphone parts now too, and all of the backs have s on them. Here's the thing, the white fronts he sold, did not have the  on them, so he's not infringing trademark in that case. I doubt the parts were stolen, or that he was aware that they were stolen. White parts were hitting the market around that time, I know, I was buying iPhone 4 parts from the moment I could find them (I run a repair shop). None of them were marked **Stolen iPhone 4 parts**. The kid is just being made an example of, as though apple were his high school principal. He outsmarted you apple, get over it.

 

[saxofunk]

oh crap, I just infringed Apple's trademarks by using the  character in my above post! I'm probably going to receive a cease and desist letter in the next few minutes. Oh dang! I did it again...Arn you better remove that character from the smilies, you're infringing on Apple's trademarks.

 

[bwillwall]

Have some pity apple, not everyone will stay on your side if you just turn into a big mean government.

 

[JAT]

Some of you guys here behave like the Holy Inquisition -- every defendant is guilty by your very definition and you don't even need to know any facts for it.

True, we don't have all the facts. But have you noticed that almost 100% of the opinions fall on the same lines as usual? IE: You are against Apple, LTD is for Apple, etc.

That speaks to you, as well. So you can mock other posters, as usual, but it isn't putting you in a good light. You are voting that crime is ok, congrats. Maybe I'm just not familiar with Germany's laws.

The facts we do know are these:

• Parts were stolen
• Da Kid acquired and resold them
• Da Kid knew enough about them to realize "white iPhones" were in ridiculously high demand and how to market these parts
• $130K is the amount, and that puts the crime well into felony range

After these facts, the answers will likely be fairly simple. I doubt Kid would convince a jury of complete innocence based on his obvious comprehension of the ridiculousness surrounding these white phones, if it comes to that. But this is a civil case about the cash. (btw, my phone is black, because I wanted it black)