Dave Horvath
12 Dec 2006 4:13
It seems to be common place anymore for one company to scream copyright infringement over another because of the most minute details in their own intellectual properties. Almost daily we hear about a lawsuit being issued because someone came increasingly close to a successful product strategy. However, I'm not too sure the judges were prepared when they heard the case over Apple's newest gripe.
There's a British company by the name of LoveHoney who has caused quite a bit of stir within Apple's ranks over their flagship product, the iPod. While ingenius accessories for the famed iPod are nothing out of the ordinary, LoveHoney had successfully created some time ago the iBuzz. The whole point of the iBuzz is so that a couple or even a solo artist can pleasure themselves all the while keeping beat with the tempo of whatever is playing on the iPod.
One would think that this possibly morally objective accessory would be Apple's biggest gripe, however that doesn't seem to be the case. Apple is more upset by the fact that on LoveHoney's website, they portrayed a silouette of a woman in the midst of said pleasure in true iPod form. The famous neon colored backgrounds with a shadowed person carrying an iPod in perfect clarity has been a symbol of iPod since it came into the mainstream. Apple is suing LoveHoney, not for what the portrayal was, but merely for the fact that they used their advertisement scheme as their own.
Apple's legal representatives Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP stated that their intellectual property "may have been copied or substantially copied from those in which our client own the copyright, without our client's consent...", which leads one to wonder if Apple, themselves have silouetted pictures of women in the throes of passion.
Interestingly enough for Apple, this isn't the first time they've gone after a product that was sexually explicit. Last month, Apple formally objected to the release of a Japanese masturbatory aid dubbed the gPod, stating that the name was too close to their own proprietary property.
Source: The Register