“Two United States Marshals raided a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday afternoon, walking away with several one-wheeled electric scooters,” Cyrus Farivar reports for Ars Technica. “The company that makes the scooters, Changzhou First International Trade Co., was sued by American company Future Motion, on two claims of alleged patent infringement.”
“Changzhou hasn’t made any formal legal response or yet had a chance to defend itself against the claims. Future Motion’s lawyers filed their motion in federal court in Las Vegas on Tuesday and then had a hearing by telephone on Wednesday,” Farivar reports. “After the hearing, which lasted just seven minutes, US District Judge Miranda Du issued an order that Changzhou’s products be seized and that it stop sales.”
“Acting on the emergency court order, the marshals quietly disassembled the Changzhou booth and seized ‘five to six’ scooters along with some marketing materials, according to Future Motion’s attorney, Shawn Kolitch, who was present for the raid,” Farivar reports. “‘This was unusually fast — I’ve never heard of a situation where anybody was able to get a [temporary restraining order] and a seizure the same day,’ he told Ars. ‘I think the reason that it was exceptionally fast was that we emphasized in the motion that the harm that we were most concerned about was the attention that this product would get at CES.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Scooters, we can protect in 7 minutes.
iPhones and iPads? Not even in 7 years.
Guess it depends on how much money’s at stake or something.
SEE ALSO:
Apple loses Chinese smartphone crown to iPhone imitator Xiaomi – August 3, 2015
Xiaomi, which makes billions ripping off Apple, warns people not to buy knockoff versions of its devices – January 12, 2015
No it’s not about money. Or it is. How much you are willing to grease the monkey with. Which we knew, under Steve Jobs, wasn’t a thing. His charisma alone defined third party interaction. However today all people want to see or hear, have to do with under the table cash. Apple doesn’t play those games. The result is a bunch of BS and hassle.
A little guy who can’t afford to play the same games Apple does, has to pay up. The results are effective.
Why are people obsessed with under-the-table cash?
Because taxes are far too high and what the taxpayer gets for their confiscated wealth is far too little, that’s why.
“Imagine 4.9 million new jobs. Instead of Obama’s income stagnation, imagine average wages rising 12.2 percent over the next decade. Capital investment rising 43.9 percent. And every income-level seeing double-digit increases in after-tax income. Imagine exports and manufacturing jobs booming. Our trade deficit falling as the tax bias against American made goods is eliminated. Imagine a 10 percent income tax, with every American filling out his or her taxes on a postcard or iPhone app. And abolishing the IRS as we know it.” – Ted Cruz
https://www.tedcruz.org/tax_plan/
Hey David, isn’t it just so CUTE how the little peasants clamor for us to have even more money!!!? I love them.
Non Sequitur. A 10% income tax helps EVERYONE.
👍👍👍👍… Simple comsumption tax… Period.
ahhhhhh. will it ever happen… With all the bs lobbying powerr in USofA ???
This is cute – so Ted Cruz will fix everything WITH IMAGINATION.
Awesome. Cruzers live in fantasyland…
You can’t get there without first imagining it.
I do not want to go *anywhere* that originates in the imagination of Ted Cruz. Almost anyone is better than that guy. He is crazy, even for Texas Republicans.
Fwhatever, I would give your rants a little more credence if you stopped equating taxes to “confiscated wealth.” Taxes are not theft, and I find it impossible to reconcile the overt and vocal patriotism and claimed fiscal conservatism of the far right with their insane unwillingness to pay sufficient taxes to support the functions of the lawful federal government. How can you keep pushing for more federal spending each year (e.g., defense budget in excess of $600B) and, yet, continue to squeeze the revenue side of the equation and claim that even more tax cuts will somehow balance the budget? Utter and complete insanity…
Do I “like” taxes? Of course not. But I feel that it is my duty to pay them along with every other citizen and business that benefits from government services and the freedom and stability provided in this country. What you promote is no less than slow suicide for our country, as we dig a deeper and deeper debt hole from which there is little hope of recovery. Make no mistake, both political parties are complicit in this fiscal madness. But I hold the Republican side more responsible for the following reasons. First, Republicans claim the moral high ground on fiscal conservatism, but they do not act on that basis. I cannot abide hypocrisy. Second, Republicans lock themselves in with pledges never to raise taxes, despite raising spending. Third, George Bush and his majority Congress that put us on a path to record deficits, an economic collapse, and the fiscal debt death spiral. You can try to sweep W under the rug and Obama blah blah blah all you want, but there is no denying that deficits were heading north of $1T annually before Obama took office. And one more item opin this highly abbreviated summary – military spending. After crowing about Ronald Reagan’s success in “winning the Cold War” by pushing the USSR to spend itself into collapse, Republicans (and some Democrats) have been pursuing the same idiotic course din the U.S. since the year 2001. There is neither stability nor security in a total economic collapse.
So spare us your platitudes. Spare us your transparent attempts to blame all evil on Democrats and Obama. Spare us your holier-than-thou Republican religion, and get a friggin’ clue on life. Your fantasy binary world of right and wrong does not exist – there are many shades of gray.
Like the final scene from “The Blues Brothers”, I imagine the U.S. Marshalls rappelling down the walls of the Vegas convention center, before descending on the 2 chinese guys in the booth with the Hoverboards
Saying Hut Hut Hut Hut
Hey, better use of the Marshalls than actually enforcing the law against a bunch of play cowboys in Oregon, actual terroristic criminals. Plus the space is air conditioned – much more comfortable than actually doing something really useful
Can you even begin to imagine what would happen if a bunch of armed muslims or blacks took over a federal building!!! And especially when they are saying they are ready to kill. Jee-zus! But a bunch of hick white play-cowboys. No problem.
Hope this signals a more aggressive protection of American IP. So tired of foreign companies shipping containers upon containers of knock off items into the country and absolutely nothing being done about it.
Couldn’t believe some of the whining over at arstechnica in the comments section. Does not matter if the board was too expensive for most people to afford. That is an issue for the market factors to decide if that company would still like to remain in business and lower it price allowing for more production but NOT foreign companies selling knock offs over here at a fraction of the price and a fraction of the quality. But people will whine and complain until it’s their property or rights that are being violated and then it’s a different story!