“What do Apple and its elegant iPads have in common with plastic, waterproof clogs that people love to hate?” Jeff Roberts asks for paidContent.
“More than you might think,” Roberts writes. “It turns out the two companies don’t just share a business strategy—Apple has also been copying Crocs’ legal strategy to keep competitors out of the market.”
Roberts writes, “Apple and Crocs share a common bond because both rely heavily on industrial design—the look and feel of a product—to distinguish them in the market. And both fight ferociously in court to assert their design patents, a little understood type of intellectual property that is different from regular utility patents. In recent months, design patents have been front and center in a Silicon Valley drama in which Apple is accusing Samsung of “slavishly copying” its iPad design, and demanding a court forbid the sale of the latter’s Galaxy tablets.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]