Apple sued by maker of iPod knockoffs

Hi TUAW,

i just read from a chinese mac news, which has a very good reputation for their fairness of news.

From frostyplace.com

The lawsuit for Apple vs luxpro is not finished at all; the court only disagreed to Luxpro to paid Apple from their cloning product. Since the product was pulled before it can hit to shelf. (In Taiwan, not sure in other countries)

In addition, the court agreed Luxpro's copyright infringement. Especially, when Luxpro was showing their clones in an expo in Germany last year.

A very funny quote from Luxpro CEO:
"Although our's shuffle really look like apple's, but we made it from ourselves..., Does 'lookalike' is illegal too?"

"Why is this a 'knockoff', and a Sansa (apparently)isn't?"

Because you could set a Sansa next to a Nano and tell the difference, but the Tangent looks EXACTLY like a Shuffle.

Why is this a 'knockoff', and a Sansa (apparently)isn't? Or will Apple sue them, too? More to the point, can Apple hope to prevent anybody else from making small, rectangular objects with rounded corners?

LOL

God, this is funny! They can't be serious!

I don't know how things work in Taiwan, but this is retarded. They lost their case, fair and square. Getting an appeal through doesn't change that.

"It's practically a Zune!"

My first laugh of the day!

So they are suing them for what exactly?

For what it's worth, I bought a Tangent (hey, it was $10 - I figured I could just leave it in the car in case my iPod died on a long trip). It's awful. My favorite feature is how the volume controls stop working after five minutes of play time. Fortunately, were I to subject myself to it, the battery dies after four hours anyway.

Maybe it's just a bad unit - lordy knows I had to go through four 80gb iPods before I got one that didn't have anything wrong with it out of the box - however, I trust Apple to at least do an exchange right, even if the Apple Store's dumb system makes it take 30 minutes a pop. I trust Luxpro to take my money, and maybe laugh at me as they run away. I'd love to know how they won an appeal against Apple.