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Comment by mratsim | Hacker News Reader

If there is a ban for consumer safety reasons, say in food, health, agriculture, transport, is it reasonable to pause a ban?

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We're not talking about consumer safety reasons here, and I was talking about a default posture not an absolute rule. The reason a judge has to approve pausing the ban is to work out whether it should happen in that particular case.

This isn’t that

But this is a ban due to alleged patent infringement (or alleged abuse of the patent system, depending on one's opinion of Apple) - comparing this to a public harm/public-benefit scenario is a distraction.

And to add to that - there's no harm in allowing the sale of these devices to continue, because if the court upholds the ruling then Apple could always be sued for damages during that time(and there is no risk that Apple would not be able to pay it).

The risk is that consumers will be shafted by buying a product today that apple refuses to support later because they weren't actually allowed to sell it.

> that apple refuses to support later because they weren't actually allowed to sell it

This is a separate—and reparable—set of harms.

That's not a risk, because there's zero chance that Apple just abandons their latest Watches.

The worst possible outcome for customers is that Apple pushes a software update to disable the feature, but it's a fairly useless feature for most people.

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