Apple lays the smackdown on bloggers, again
It looks like Apple's legal team's contract must be up for renewal or something because they're after bloggers again. E-Series.org, a blog dedicated to the Nokia E-series devices reports:
Apple's lawyers have been sending out cease and desist letters to a number of theme designers, developers and bloggers who according to Apple have been encroaching on their territory. Anything remotely linked to Apple+Phone has been a target of these hard working lawyers.
This time our friends in Cupertino have released the hounds on bloggers who have posted links and images to copycat iPhone themes for (GASP!) other handsets.
You'll remember that almost immediately after iPhone was announced at Macworld Expo on 9 January 2007 a flurry of iPhone look-alike themes, skins and applications surfaced.
- iBerry is a "premium theme" for BlackBerrys, for which they're requesting a US$5 donation. Well, there's your first mistake.
- iPhony 0.2 is a launcher application for Palm OS by Sim2Go that was removed from the Brighthand forums after they received "a very threatening letter from Apple's legal firm."
- iPhone Style for Pocket PC was also removed after pressure from Apple.
- An iPhone ringtone that was ripped from the Jobs keynote, cleaned up and posted flew under Apple's radar for a number of days. But it also was removed from Gizmodo "because the Big A has asked us to take it down."
Since any resourceful Google user can still find any of the above themes in mere minutes why would Apple suffer another PR black eye for harassing bloggers? I understand that they're trying to protect their intellectual property, but this comes across as heavy handed to me. After all, aren't these themes just viral marketing for iPhone?
How can Apple talk out of both sides of their mouths like this? I think that they should spend more time working out their little problem with Cisco instead of messing with bloggers, again.