Criticism of Apple Inc. - Vexatious Litigation

Vexatious Litigation

In November 2008, Apple sent a cease and desist letter to BluWiki, a non-commercial wiki provider, alleging a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Apple claimed that a discussion of how to get other hardware and software to inter-operate with the latest iPods infringed their copyrights. On April 27, 2009, Odioworks (the operators of BluWiki), backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued Apple in OdioWorks v. Apple, seeking a declaration of non-infringement and non-circumvention (an official response that Apple's intellectual property rights were not being infringed upon). On July 8, 2009, Apple ceased claiming infringement, stating that Apple withdrew its takedown notifications, and that "Apple no longer has, nor will it have in the future, any objection to the publication of the itunesDB Pages which are the subject of the OdioWorks complaint." The EFF noted, "While we are glad that Apple retracted its baseless legal threats, we are disappointed that it only came after 7 months of censorship and a lawsuit."

Google has accused Apple (alongside Oracle, Microsoft and others) of trying to take down Android through patent litigation, rather than innovating and competing with better products and services.