AppleInsider Staff
A Chinese court ruled in favor of the venerable Encyclopedia of China Publishing House in its suit against Apple which asserted the Cupertino company was liable for the sale of unauthorized digital copies of its encyclopedia found on the App Store.
The publisher originally asked for RMB 530,000, or about $84,200, however the final judgment handed down on Thursday by Beijing's Second Intermediate People’s Court came out to a slightly less RMB 520,000, or $82,600 win for the publishing house, reports the Beijing Times.
First filed in 2010, the suit claimed apps being sold through Apple's App Store contained pirated versions of the copy-written encyclopedia. In its defense, Apple argued that it had no involvement in the development of the third-party apps, but the court ruled the company was responsible as it both approved and profited from the apps' sale.
“The App Store offers customers in China access to an incredible selection of over 700,000 apps created by Apple’s developer community," an Apple representative told The Next Web. "As an IP holder ourselves, Apple understands the importance of protecting intellectual property and when we receive complaints, as we did in this case, we respond promptly and appropriately.â€
Thursday's case is similar to another Chinese suit in which nine writers claim Apple allowed pirated versions of their work to be sold through the App Store. In February, the group nearly doubled its compensatory demands, and is now asking for $3.65 million after an another 26 allegedly infringing products were added to the store.
Apple recently settled a drawn out dispute between defunct Chinese display maker Proview over the "iPad" moniker, ultimately paying out $60 million for rights to the trademark.
Christine McKee
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50 Comments
The $60 million settlement was a huge mistake of Apple. Apple could negotiate with terrorists but shouldn't have negotiated about terrorism ever. Apple emboldened more terrorists to try the same thing.
The $60 million settlement was a huge mistake of Apple. Apple could negotiate with terrorists but shouldn't have negotiated about terrorism ever. Apple emboldened more terrorists to try the same thing.
Or they could get their products taken out of China; the land of soon to be 2 billion people.
In its defense, Apple argued that it had no involvement in the development of the third-party apps, but the court ruled the company was responsible as it both approved and profited from the apps' sale.
Apple's approval process seems to be a general checklist of whether or not the App adheres to some basic rules. If Apple were to do due diligence of each and every app, we wouldn't have 700,000 apps on the store.
I have seen bootlegs (toys & CDs) making it into reputed chains. This is the same case.
The straightforward way would be to send Apple a cease-and-desist which I'm sure Apple would respond to and remove the offending app and ban the developer as well. But why ask nicely when you can squeeze for some money right?
I guess it comes with the territory. Apple is so big that it is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they allow such apps to slip in without extensively checking the contents, then they wind up getting sued. If they spend inordinate amounts of time trying to verify an app, they are damned for dragging their feet on the approval process.
And with respect to the Proview settlement, maybe Apple did the wisest thing they could do at the time. I am sure they were aware of the ramnifications of a settlement and were expecting such lawsuits.
BTW, what happened to the guy who registered the leaked iPhone design? Will that circus unfold only after the iPhone releases in China? Would part of Apple's deal with China Mobile be to that they quash that silly bug so it doesn't irritate Apple?
idea for a scam: - write a book, get it copywritten and published, selling for $100+ a copy - get someone to publish it on the App Store for free - sue Apple for every copy downloaded Perhaps they need to have a system that auto scans for copywritten text the way Google does for music on Youtube.
How many seconds of Apple's income is that?