Gearfuse

Apple knows cloning. It dealt with it throughout the 1980s and 1990s until it realized it just couldn’t work out. Apple killed the clones and today, it’s going strong with OS X and an assortment of hardware. This year, a company called Psystar started shadily selling Mac clones with a hacked version of Mac OS X on it. Caught up yet? Good.

Fast forward to this week and Apple has not only sued Psystar in an attempt to preserve both intellectual property and brand image, but has also demanded that all sold Mac clones be returned. The language used:

Apple is asking a court to order Miami-based Psystar to stop making unauthorized Mac clones and to recall all of the systems it has sold to customers since it began offering them for public sale in April.

In a lawsuit filed against Psystar in federal court, Apple is seeking an order “requiring Psystar to recall all such products sold to the public as a result of Psystar’s infringement of Apple’s copyrights.”

Most seem to think that the final nail in Psystar’s coffin was when it began selling server clones with OS X in June of this year.

Apple also charged Psystar with illegally copying, modifying, and redistributing some of its products. The 18-page complaint outlines a total of 10 charges against Psystar. Psystar officials did not return a call seeking comment.

In the end, Apple will win. No doubt about it. They’ll probably sue Belkin while they’re at it.

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Comparing to Nokia, LG is doing a far better job in handling illegal “replicas”. That is, they act before the replicas had the chance to become popular, before their own product starts selling, and most importantly before they have to hire a law firm. Across the Easter weekend LG has issued a warning letter to shops in Hong Kong warning them from carrying the SHINE clone (a clone from a mainland Chinese company), the shops were so freaked out and removed the stock so fast that we didn’t even have the chance to figure out what they’re called, how they looked like. If Nokia is Nokir, does that make LG Shine Shinier? –Sam Chan

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Pictured above is the infamous N73-clone, called Nokir E828, produced by a mainland Chinese company (NOKIR) next to the real Nokia N73 (on the right), it has been selling well enough to catch Nokia’s attention. However the company did not have enough evidence to go against the manufacturer and the copyright-protection laws are a bit tricky in mainland China, so instead they decided to bully the tiny tiny shops that are selling the Nokir E828 in Hong Kong. Those poor scapegoats are asked by the representing law firm to relinquish all the stock voluntarily and pay a HKD 30,000 ($3870) fine for the damage incurred. Most of those shops are only run by 1-2 people in a space no bigger than 25 squared feet in Mong Kok (a more ghetto part of Hong Kong). According to the shopkeepers, they’ve been trying to get in touch with Nokia as the deal is not fair, so far they have received no reply.

The Nokir E828 is a dualband GSM phone that houses a 2.6″ QVGA touchscreen and a 2 megapixels camera. MP3 and MP4 are supported and the memory expansion used is microSD. Being smaller and lighter than the N73 (110×55x14mm 105g), the E828 seems to have everything a fanboy would dream of, check out the $100 price tag, too: unbeatable. You’ll have to be very lucky to find any of these after this incident though. –Sam Chan

Link (in Chinese)