Good news: Get a 99 cent iPhone; Bad news: Apple sued

If you live in Souther California, be prepared for an all-out frenzy. The store chain 99(cents) Only Stores is celebrating their 25th anniversary on Thursday. To give back to the customers that allowed them to prosper through the Wal-Mart Era, they’re handing out 99-cent iPhones to their first nine customers. We foresee three stabbings and a handful of robberies as people wait on line for this insane promotion.

We’ll look for more news on this one, because we’re pretty sure people are already camping out in front of the premises. If this was us running the promotion, we’re not sure how we’d handle it. You could mandate that no one waits in front of the store, though that would surely cause a stampede when the doors open.

Good promotion, though. Now, if you visit this site, you can put your existing AT&T SIM card — including your prepaid SIM — into the iPhone and use your current service. We just love tech nerds.

However, not is all peachy with the iPhone. A company is suing Apple over a patent for the iPhone’s keyboard. These allegations are rather serious, since they claim that Apple deliberately used patented technology and passed it off as its own.

SP [Technologies] filed the suit in a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas, which is considered to be sympathetic to plaintiffs in patent infringement cases. T. John Ward, SP’s lawyer, argued in his filing that the case should be heard in the Texas court because Apple conducts business in the area by selling or attempting to sell the iPhone online or through local stores.

It’s just the price you pay for being a big boy. However, if this case isn’t settled and a jury finds that Apple is guilty of patent infringement, they would hae to “pay punitive damages equal to three times the economic loss that the plaintiff suffered.” Obviously, we see Apple trying to settle this one, guilty or not.

It looks like Apple is still spending, spending, spending, though. Take the “official iPhone tool” for example. How can Apple afford to send this to all iPhone users if they have such a large lawsuit at hand?

[ZDNet] [The Street]

Related Posts

One Response

1. 10 iPhone problems you may or may not have been aware of | Prepaid Reviews Says
   

   [...] to viral attack; AT&T is the wrong carrier for the phone; there will be many patent issues (it’s already happening); and the engineers of the device will be poached by competitors. Once again, plenty of sour [...]

   
   Posted on August 14th, 2007 at 11:31 am

Leave a Reply