Comments on: Letter from Apple lawyers makes little girl cry

By: RexRhino

RexRhino — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:24:48 +0000

Apple is totally in the right here. If Apple isn’t vigilant to the extreme in letting people know that they cannot accept ideas, then they will get their pants sued off.

I think it is an important lesson for the little girl about the legal system.

By: Sunny

Sunny — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:54:04 +0000

I’d say Apple showed a lack of class in the way they responded to her, but you know what? It’s really not their fault. It’s the fault of this overly-litigious culture we live in. If companies like Apple didn’t have to worry about lawsuits coming from people who give them “free” ideas, they probably would have responded to her in an entirely different manner.

I’m 23 now, and I did something similar to this when I was around 9. I wrote Nintendo and Sega (the 2 big video game companies of the time) a letter where I (rather naively) proposed that the two merge together and form an ultimate video game system, so I wouldn’t have to buy a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis. I also proposed some other ideas about what kind of games they should make for this system. The response I got surprised me, because Nintendo actually wrote back- in detail- thanking me for my idea but explaining the advantages of not merging with Sega. Sega responded with a similar letter, though not as detailed.

Do you think I’d get that kind of response now? Absolutely not. They’d probably end up having their stupid law department send the same kind of letter to me, because they’re overly paranoid about lawsuits that may occur from such ideas being sent to them.

This is just another example of litigation gone out of control, and how it’s ruining this society one step at a time.

By: wavemaker

wavemaker — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:01:40 +0000

This is simply a garden variety example of the ham-handedness of corporate public relations at Apple. Obviously, when a company leaves consumer correspondence in the (final) hands of IP lawyers, they’re asking for bad press. They got it.

And they guaranteed that when this little girl goes into the audio gadget field (assuming Apple is still around), she’ll be working for the competition.

Not a big deal, but a “filler” worth reporting, for sure.

By: James Collins

James Collins — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:34:22 +0000

E-Bell might be correct, but I doubt it. I think that people who would make a media issue out of what was probably a form letter would sue. What was the purpose in making an issue out of this? I could understand it if the letter was a personalized attack on the girl, but it was just a business letter stating Apple’s policy.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:09:27 +0000

Hey, maybe she’ll graduate from Stanford and start a tech company that eats Apple’s lunch. But James raises a very good point – why is this news, anyway?

By: Deoxy

Deoxy — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 10:19:38 +0000

No, not everyone… but enough people to cynically expect it.

By: E-Bell

E-Bell — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 09:26:00 +0000

The girl’s idea was to add a display of lyrics to the iPod Nano.

This technology is not novel – my own MP3 player has this ability and I believe other versions of the iPod do as well.

But even if it were a novel idea (and I can certainly understand why Apple would reject it), not everyone is as money-grubbing as James suggests.

By: James Collins

James Collins — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 08:37:53 +0000

I think Apple is caught between a rock and a hard place here. Who made this letter availible to the media? The girl’s parents did. Do you think for one second that if Apple happened to impliment any of the girl’s suggestions, even by chance, that these same parents would be trying to collect royalties on these ideas? I’d say that they would be suing as fast as they could find a lawyer.

By: Stephen Macklin

Stephen Macklin — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:25:54 +0000

If they had any class at all the apology would have been delivered as an mp3 on a new iPod.