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Anti-bullying law is seriously needed. Awarding the bullied who triumphs 10 - 100x their legal fee that attracts interest every day the bully refuses to pay by
by vezycash 6y ago
Anti-bullying law is seriously needed. Awarding the bullied who triumphs 10 - 100x their legal fee that attracts interest every day the bully refuses to pay by going to a higher court.
- supernova87a 6y agoI'm all for the pear company succeeding. But what do you mean by bullying? And why does it deserve 10-100x penalty? I hazard to guess you're maybe applying emotional baggage about personal bullying to the corporate world. This is just a trademark dispute, asserted by one, refuted by another. It happens all the time. It could be the smaller company suing the larger one even. This isn't like a patent troll leech on society case. I'm kind of fascinated to understand what must be in your mind or experience that you think such penalties for normal legal actions are warranted. *edited to correct as trademark dispute
- grumple 6y agoLarge companies win without a fight because the legal costs are easily assumed by them, but are devastating to smaller businesses. Wealth usually wins by default because smaller companies can’t afford the fight. Surely that’s easy to understand? If you think this is all “working as intended”... well... that’s unfortunate and I think the vast majority of people would disagree.
- the_other 6y ago“Wealth usually wins by default” is fully “as intended”, according to Noam Chomsky.
- echelon 6y agoApple has unlimited money. They're terrorizing a mom and pop. Apple needs to lose, and they need to pay $10-50M for torturing these poor, resourceless people. This is so asymmetrically unfair it hurts.
- supernova87a 6y agoTerrorizing? Poor, resourceless people? Do you just say these things as a reflex?
- znpy 6y agoWell, compared to apple...
- zepto 6y agoAnd you don’t think this would result in a million more frivolous lawsuits against them?
- jacquesm 6y agoWhat's good for the goose...
- zepto 6y agoWhat exactly do you mean by that? What are you comparing? I was just referring to the $10M penalty. I agree that they should lose and that they should pay some kind of penalty. I just think it shouldn’t be a lottery win for the people they filed against - they should definitely be made whole for the frivolous lawsuit - but not much more than that. It’s worth pointing out too that the legal system clearly doesn’t consider the lawsuit frivolous. Why is that, and why don’t we seem to care about it? Surely there are judges who have a responsibility to dismiss frivolous cases and prevent this kind of thing.
- chinhodado 6y agoHow is it possible when Apple is the one initiating the lawsuit here?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chongli 6y ago.
- xwdv 6y agoIt’s not about what’s in his mind, it’s about what’s not in it, that is sophisticated legal knowledge or experience in healthy and normal legal disputes. Typically, these people want to push extreme or even infinite punishment for mundane things that personally annoy them or feed into some narrative they have.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- CaliforniaKarl 6y agoThis isn't a copyright dispute, this is a challenged trademark. This is not a lawsuit, it's an administrative opposition. A different set of laws, policies, and procedures are in play here. > I'm kind of fascinated to understand what must be in your mind or experience that you think such penalties for normal legal actions are warranted. Please don't cross-examine. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- clusterfish 6y agoLet's not fantasise that every legal action is normal. This one certainly isn't, it's frivolous, if not legally then definitely morally. I don't know how to draw a defensible legal line separating one from the other, but this particular case would certainly be on the wrong side of it. Apple doesn't own all the rights to all fruit in trademarks. They know it, and they know they won't win, they're just using the courts to wage a war of attrition to get what they want. This bullshit should not be possible.
- arrosenberg 6y agoWhat OP was describing sounds like anti-SLAPP legislation, which many states have adopted. Essentially if you file a frivolous slander/libel suit with the sole intention of harassing the target, then the other party can file a countersuit, in which the judge can throw out the case and award damages to the defending party (triple damages in CA!). It's both restitution for time and reputation lost, as well as a deterrent against targeted legal harassment.
- dutchmartin 6y agoJust common sense laws about who pays the legal fees in cases where it is a small entity against the Goliath. Here in the Nederlands, the loser of the lawsuit pays for the legal fees of the winner. This makes sure that someone who files lawsuits that are doomed at the start will think twice about that because it will cost them a lot of money.
- arkanciscan 6y agoDo you spell it the "Nederlands" or was that a typo?
- Xylakant 6y agoIn the Netherlands you spell it Nederland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands so it may well be a native speaker mixing up the spellings.
- basejumping 6y agosince in dutch you call the country Nederland it's not a big mistake to call it The Nederlands
- arkanciscan 6y agoI didn't say it was a mistake. Why does everyone read everything I write in bad faith!?
- DanBC 6y ago> or was that a typo? Typos are mistakes.
- arkanciscan 6y agoThanks Webster
- anakaine 6y ago
- drchiu 6y agoI think what the commenter is suggesting is that there’s an asymmetric cost for the parties involved. In this case, the legal costs for Apple is negligible. There’s a whole legal department whose sole job is to find and engage in cases like this. For the pear company, the cost to defend necessarily means the owners (likely) have to stop what they’re doing to work on a defence case. Apple can keep chugging along while Pear Co likely needs to drop everything and focus on this.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- riffic 6y agoTrademark law, unfortunately, requires vigilance that looks a lot like bullying.
- scaryclam 6y agoOnly where it's applicable. A meal planner company that has a logo that looks little like an apple logo doesn't really fall into this. If it was a phone shop then sure, but this is well outside of the needs-to-because-law scope and into the bullying scope.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoEven if it were a phone shop there's zero chance of confusion, this is a frivolous suit and purposeful waste of court time.
- mnm1 6y agoAbout as much as an apple looks like a pear.
- wldcordeiro 6y agoFuck that, trademark law is broken if it requires something that "looks like" bullying. It's just bullying with some flimsy justifications.
- cylon13 6y agoThe issue isn't that our IP laws aren't complicated enough and need to be appended until they work, it's that we have IP laws in the first place. It's a wrong abstraction, there's no scarcity in information.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoIP laws don't address scarcity, they address[ed] fair recompense and motivation to support the public good. We do not want people to keep secret their World changing ideas but instead release them for the betterment of society. 7 years as sole seller of your own creations, and leave to apply for 7 more years - IIRC - were the terms under Queen Anne's Statute protecting creative works (approximating copyright). Then works are freely available to all, and deposit requirements meant preservation and access was afforded. The alternative is that corporate entities get all the money and creators get all the costs and the pubic domain gets nothing. There's a lot wrong IMO with Western IP laws (I don't know about others) but the concept of them is not wrong. There's specifically no protection for information in patent and copyright laws (database rights, eh, maybe ...).