TechGuy678

As an intellectual property attorney who does a lot of international work, I'm surprised by the slanderous undertone of this article, the quoted NYTimes article and many of the commentators. This is a legal question and needs to be looked at from a purely legal standpoint.

Apple apparently didn't initially file for protection of its iPhone trademark in class 18 (leather goods) in China, which is somewhat understandable looking at the significance of "leather goods" in Apple's product palette, but perhaps not the best strategy for a mark that Apple could have foreseen as becoming extremely valuable.

In the meantime, a Russian company saw its opportunity and nabbed the trademark in class 18. That Russian company then sold off its rights, which is a very common thing to do, to a Chinese company. Many major US companies own trademarks that predate their own existence. 

The Russian company's trademark registration was probably trying to cash in on Apple's parallel use of the mark. Many countries have laws to protect owners of "ubiquitous" trademarks from such freeloaders. However, there's a big difference between suspecting such freeloading registration of a "ubiquitous" trademark and proving it before a court of law. For example, just because many of us know the iPhone trademark now doesn't mean that mark was ubiquitous in China when that Russian company obtained its trademark. And while many countries also have laws to protect trademark owners from trademark registrations that could "water down" the older trademark, it could be that China, at the time of the Russian registration, didn't have laws like that yet. Countries are always working on fixing unforeseen loopholes in the law.

Based on the few facts I've seen (and my experience with Chinese IP law), I have no reason to believe that the Chinese court was biased, let alone corrupt or crooked as some commentators have suggested. China has made enormous progress in the realm of protecting intellectual property over the last few decades.

If you'd like to complain about an unjust patent system, how about calling your representative in Congress, asking them why it costs well over a million dollars to litigate a US patent and ask them to work on legislation to get those costs down.

Rightfully so in my opinion, many people say that Steve Jobs killed music. Yes, he liberated us musicians; I can now do a lot of stuff on my MBP that would have required $$$ equipment just a few decades ago. But at the same time, he played a leading role in the demise of music to a "cheap" commodity.

As for the MacBook Pro, it used to cater to musicians and aficionados of high fidelity music right out of the box. The MBP used to sport an optical audio output and a CD drive.

I can understand that Apple dropped the CD drive to make their laptops smaller and increase their streaming revenues, but it has been the death of high fidelity. The days of visiting a store where the salespeople knew music and could steer you in interesting directions are rapidly dying. In turn, it is becoming increasingly difficult to purchase music in high fidelity aka CD's, particularly for those of us who try to support real jobs in brick and mortar businesses. And we all know that it's not the musicians who earn the big bucks off streaming.

As regards the dropping of the optical audio output, this is outright harassment to many of us who now have to daisy chain bunch of adapters to get a digital audio signal from our laptops to a high quality DAC / amplifier. Nothing more pleasing (NOT!!) than sitting on the couch in front of my exquisite speakers tweaking the mix of a song with a bunch of adapters dangling precariously off my lap where it used to be a simple glass fiber.