Would you pay $21 million for a clock design? Apple did
November 11, 2012 4
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Earlier this year we learned that Apple stole the design of a famous, and tradmarked, Swiss clock. After the Swiss called out Apple on the matter, Apple moved quickly to secure some sort of licensing agreement with Swiss Federal Railway. And reach an agreement they did, but they didn’t bother to tell us lonely peons the details of the agreement. Now, however, terms of the arrangement have leaked.
According to French news agency FNP, Apple paid Swiss Federal Railway £13 million ($21 million USD) for the rights to use the Swiss clock design in iOS 6. It is unclear if this agreement has a sunset provision (i.e. end date) or not.
So does using the same design as a famous Swiss clock really make iOS 6 $21 million more valuable or did someone at Apple make a very big oops and the shareholders had to pay the price? I’m thinking the latter.
[via TechRadar]
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That was one big oops! So much for innovation at Apple….
Agreed, it’s the latter. Surely, they could have come up with something by themselves. They are coming across as worse than Microsoft used to.
Niether one is innocent, Microsoft nor Apple, they are both a bunch of thieves. I am sure if one tore down every OS made by both over the years it is probably safe to say that not more than 10% actually belongs to them, they will either screw you out of or STEAL EVERYTHING they want, it’s worse than making a deal with the devil..
Just google the web and read horror stories about all the programmers and designers that got into bed with both Apple and Microsoft and have wound up getting the high hard one from them. I wouldn’t trust either one of them as far as I could spit.
Hello, all.
@ “Ed”;
You got that right!
Every time this subject comes up, I’m reminded of how M$ stole base code from IBM for OS/2, and put it in Win2k, unaltered, and complete w/ the original coder’s comments, still intact.
I can’t speak to Apple so much, but the history of M$ is one lawsuit after another, w/ M$ settling out of court in most cases, because there’s no way they could win one of the “we stole it from them first” cases.
Have a GREAT day, neighbors!