Apple sued over iPhone, MacBook multi-touch tech

Hold onto your iPhones, because a Taiwanese touch-sensitive technology firm is suing Apple over claims that the Mac maker used its multi-touch patents without permission. In a lawsuit filed yesterday with the US District Court in San Francisco, Elan Microelectronics claimed that several Apple products - also including the …

[sleepy]

Outcome is uncertain

"The two eventually reached a cross-licensing agreement, but the experience is bound to have given Elan the confidence it’ll need to take on Apple and win."

Not necessarily; with Burst.com v Apple, first MS licensed for $60M but Apple went through litigation and settled for $10M, despite having by then achieved a near monopoly with iPod/iTunes. Winning in court helps all your other competitors too, so there's substantial extra advantage in licensing over litigating - an immediate and exclusive return.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good! The more lawsuits against Apple, the better

I just have this thing where I'm happy anytime a company that TRIED TO RIP ME OFF (Apple refused to honor a warranty until threat of legal action) and that LIES TO THEIR CUSTOMERS, gets sued by someone else... even if the new suits are for entirely unrelated reasons.

But wait, Apple could never do anything wrong - Apple is run by God - anyone who complains about Apple must be a Winblows fanboi - and of course anyone who doesn't suck Jobs' **** is automatically a troll regardless of the validity of their statements.

For the record:

I still have 3 very old Macs which I think are great and they still serve their original purposes quite well (purchased long before the aforementioned problem occurred), and I have no intention of replacing those old Macs' functionality with modern-day Windows equivalents, but I will NEVER in a million years buy another *new* Mac which would only support the EVIL that is the modern-day Apple.

(Apple fanboiz can commence their usual "ur just a jealous PC-troll" flaming now)

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Good! The more lawsuits against Apple, the better

Agreed, I am in a similar situation and have a similar bad taste of apples in my mouth.

I've had 3 ibooks and a mac mini, many ipods. I won't be buying anything more from them.

When one of my ibooks died after i'd had it 8 months - through no fault of my own, it just crashed and died one day. Apple refused to fix it even though i had proved i'd had it 8 months because i'd bought it off a website and they'd had it more than a year apparently. Never mind i had receipts for having had it 8 months. 50 quid saved by getting it off 3rd party website bit me there!

Apple wanted 500 quid to replace the motherboard on a g4 ibook 800mhz - worth less than 500 quid at the time they were asking for this. My old g3 ibooks are still running as well as they ever were.

Yes i have windows machines and linux boxes and even a freebsd and a couple of sparc solaris machines at home. I'm no kind of fanboi of anything, i just like computers, Bad taste of apple? definately.

bring it on appletards .

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Good! The more lawsuits against Apple, the better

The more idiot mactards who buy obviously used equipment the more they deserve to suffer.

There's this thing called Apple Care.... I hear they give you 3 year warranty.

People with a lack of common sense shouldn't buy mac.

I don't bet on Apple's engineering... I bet on the fact they are going to pay for repairs and there mistakes in the first 3 years.

I also bet that people are going to be stupid when it comes to common sense so I take the time to explain it to my clients when they buy a mac as to the "Fine print".

I would think most IT chaps here would know how to read...let alone think rationally.

[Trevor]

@ Apple Haters

When you pay for the illusion of quality, shouldn't you also expect to pay for the illusion of a warantee?

Getting my coat...

[Eric Hood]

warranty

@AC

In Australia if you take your tax receipt to a retailer that handles repairs they can update your date of purchase by uploading your receipt with the repair request. It takes four or five days.

[sleepy]

Ripoff Apple? - your claim is against the retailer

If you buy a product at retail, you have a one year warranty from the retailer. If it was already old when the retailer sold it to you, it's not surprising the manufacturer won't honour the retailer's obligation free of charge as they normally do. Go back to the retailer and get your money back if they won't fix it.

It's not Apple's fault if an unauthorised retailer passed off an old computer as brand new. Manufacturers try not to allow crooks to easily launder old and broken kit into free replacements. Like all large companies, Apple is very precise in the circumstances when it will or won't honour warranty. Try to present your warranty claim in a way they can honour. Check the serial number of supposedly new kit from third party retailers; Apple serial numbers incorporate year and week of manufacture in the first few digits. A web retailer making 2% gross margin cannot afford not to shift every item as new, even if they aren't.

In my experience, all warranty claims are a nightmare unless you buy direct or buy extra warranty (e.g. Applecare).