"Apple Story" store in Flushing, New York. Credit Greg Autry via BirdAbroad.
Posted on 08/05/2011 8:08:54 PM PDT by Swordmaker
After a number of fake Apple retail stores in China gained publicity online, Apple appears to have taken legal action, undoubtedly looking to shut down the counterfeit locations designed to look like its own operations.
Apple has gone on the offensive against a number of defendants, including 50 John Does and unnamed businesses, in a new trademark infringement suit. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York remains under a court seal, so the specifics of the complaint are not known.
However, one of the defendants in the case is "Apple Story Inc.," matching the name of a retail outlet that mimics Apple's own highly successful retail operation. "Apple Story" is located in the neighborhood of Flushing in Queens, New York; Apple's lawsuit was filed in Brooklyn.
A photo of the "Apple Story" store, submitted to BirdAbroad, shows accessories for Apple products held in displays designed to look like Apple's iPhone and iPad.
Based on the photo, the New York store does not appear to go to the same great lengths taken by some highly elaborate fake stores in China. A handful of locations in the city of Kunming look nearly identical to Apple's legitimate stores, and employees at the fake locations even wear signature blue t-shirts.
AppleInsider attempted Thursday afternoon to contact Samuel Joseph Chuang, the attorney representing defendants Apple Story Inc., Fun Zone Inc., and Janic Po Chiang, to confirm the exact nature of Apple's lawsuit. A request for comment was not returned as of the time of publication.
Because the lawsuit is sealed, it is unknown whether this particular complaint, filed on July 25, also targets the elaborate overseas operations. It's possible that Apple does not yet know who runs those stores, and could be included in the 50 anonymous John Does that are named as defendants with no attorney listed.
The most important tech news this year has been about gadget companies suing one another over patents. (I say “gadget”, because are there any computer companies left?
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The Apple executives never took any world history courses?
The Chi-Coms murdered an estimated 60 million of their own citizens. They care that a foreign corporation is upset about something? Where's Apple going to get their toys made if the Chi-Coms say, "No more cheap labor for you!"
Apple’s costs suggests that they are made in the US, but they are not. I guess that explains their great profits now.
If they make the move to US manufacture I’m sure they would find loads of support, support that would attone for their lost profits from cheap labor.
If I lived in China I would patronize the (allegedly) fake Apple stores. You can get a better deal these plus they sell ye ol pirated Windows7 DVDs for $2 that you can slap on your new Apple computer for dual boot. In those “fake” Apple stores they probably sell Apple laptops that are made on the real Chinese assembly lines but made during a ghost shift after normal factory hours. This is the only way the workers can survive given the slave wages Apple/FoxComm pays them
Exactly. If one has to be an Apple (or anything) fanboy, one might as well take advantage of the available opportunities.
Hmmmm, you are misconstruing cost with price. If that is the case, how do you account for the costs/prices of Samsung, HTC, and Motorola tablets not being able to compete on price with the unsubsidized iPad unless they are subsidized by carriers? Strange... all of the are essentially made on the same assembly lines by the same workers. Yet Apple sells the iPads at prices WITH a profit margin of 41% while requiring that THEIR assembly line workers be paid three times more than others—while the other makers are losing money trying to meet Apple's iPad price points! Your argument does not hold water.
Genuine Apple fanboys are connoisseurs of the entire range of Apple products. The real, the fake and the in between....home brew machines too running on modded editions of the Apple OS. The arrivistes are the ones who can only talk about their iPad and that fabulous Raoul who works at the Apple Store
The sound I hear is a billion Chinese raughing their asses off.
Dennis, you are posting propaganda falsehoods again. There ARE NO "after normal factory hours" you so blithely just invented. Foxconn runs the Apple assembly lines 24/7... because Apple is selling every single product they can currently make on their own. For the top selling Apple products, there simply is NO EXCESS PRODUCTION CAPACITY TO BE HAD! FoxConn cannot afford to have an assembly line to be idle.
In addition, Dennis, APPLE is in charge of the inventory purchasing and delivery, not FoxConn and given Apple's world class expertise in "just in time" inventory control and delivery techniques—which Apple pioneered—any discrepancy in Apple product parts diverted to "gray market" assembly would stick out like a sore thumb hit with a 16 pound sledge hammer. Apple would certainly notice.
As for your "slave wages" mantra you keep asserting, starting three years ago at Apple's insistence the FoxConn Apple Assembly line workers were given a raise that elevated their pay to three times the prevailing Chinese assembly factory industry wages. . . when the included room and board in FoxConn company cities are factored in. FoxConn workers who work on other assembly lines for other companies are not so handsomely paid. It is not the way I would want to live but it is the facts. Apple has staff stationed in China to monitor the pay, working and living conditions, age, and hours of the FoxConn employees who work on Apple products. Are they paid the wages they would be paid in the United States? No, they are not... but they are paid far better then their compatriots in China, in the same industry.So your accusations are again, wrong.
But, you SHOULD know this because you've been TOLD this, time and time again. . . with links to the evidence! So why do you keep repeating the lies? Dennis, it has to be deliberate.
Before you bring it up, the so called suicide problem at FoxConn is a trumped up FUD issue long since thoroughly debunked. The suicide rate at the FoxConn employees is 75% LESS than the national suicide rate of same age demographic! Quit making up your "non-factoids" and posting them as if you know something.
I’m talking about a MacBook Pro - - which I admit I did not make clear.
I’ve been pricing a 15” model. Why is it so much more than my Fujitsu?
Apple needs to check some of it’s legitimate stores out here in Houston. The one on 1960 never answers their phone.
If fake Apple stores sells real Apple products, that would seem to suggest a diversion within the Apple factory. And you would think that would have to involve management corruption at a pretty high level. There was also news recently about a fake Ikea store, although they didn’t seem to have real Ikea merchandise.
To do business in China you must have a Chinese partner with 50% ownership in the partnership. Is anyone even Apple surprised when they turn their technology over to the Chinese partner that he turns it over to the Government.
Maybe someone can confirm this story: we were told to stay out of China if we didn’t want our products knocked off. A US trade rep told us GM had just finished a plant in China and 10 miles away was a completely identical plant bolt for bolt built by the Chinese.
Well, for one thing, there is only one i7 Fujitsu notebook that I can find on Fujitsu's website.
That is the Fujitsu LifeBook® E780, but it is a DUAL core processor notebook only, that has only a 4MB cache. The Apple MacBook Pro 15 comes STANDARD with a i7 QUAD core processor with a 6MB cache. The Fujitsu notebook cannot be configured with a Quad core processor... so we are prevented from upgrading it for a true comparison... but we can proceed for other things.
After adding all of the upgrades, configured on the Fujitsu website, to get as CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to an Apple MacBook Pro 15—and you still have a DUAL CORE notebook, not a QUAD—
The price of the New Fujitsu LifeBook® E780 Notebook is $ 1907.00
The price of the STANDARD MacBook Pro, a QUAD is just $ 1799.00
So, what happened to your complaint about Apple being so much more expensive than the Fujitsu? When the two computers are made as close to specs as possible, the Apple is LESS EXPENSIVE than the Fujitsu and far more powerful.
Years ago my boss was assigned to work in China dealing with Chinese engineers. And he was flabbergasted at the "pay," if you can call it that, his counterparts received for their work.In conversation with them he mentioned that his wife worked, and they asked him how she got to work. He said he was embarassed to tell them that not only did he have a car but his wife did too - it was just too radically outside the realm of their experience. So he lied and said that she rode the bus.
I will agree on one thing...... FoxComm problems are blown way out of proportion. All Chinese factories run “ghost shifts” to pull in extra money...if the item is real hot. Why should Apple be immune? Jobs is not bulletproof nor is Apple. Where is your link that there are not “ghost runs” of iPads for example?
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