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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

> paying 21 million dollars for a clock design on your mobile OS seems to me like complete insanity

Well, they're not. They're paying 21 million dollars in exchange for not getting sued for more than that.

Yeah, obviously, but why not just backpedal by pushing an update that uses a different watch design? Surely the damages from showing their users a copyrighted watch design for a month or so would be less than 21 million.

Because it's a great design and people love it ?

This is what I thought too. Isn't $21M a bargain to pay for a 70 years split test or proof of concept done by Swiss, who incidentally were the best clock designers and makers for centuries? Whatever you call it I feel like Apple is well off for this certainly intentional reference to the top notch product.

Given that willful copyright infringement can carry a fine up to $150k per instance, a mere 140 copies of the offending OS could attract a $21 million fine. Given that ~3 million iPads with the clock shipped in the first weekend it was available, the fine for those devices alone would approach half a trillion dollars. With an entire month's worth of sales out the door, the Swiss Railway could end up owning Apple several times over - if Apple suffered the maximum fine.

Of course, all of this is completely insane. And it's not like Apple's legal folks would take an existential threat lying down. Even so, it still reflects the lunatic reality of copyright law, which is something that any sane legal team will go out of its way to avoid. That being the case, $21 million represents an extraordinarily good settlement.

$150k in the united states maybe. this is a swiss design. .what's their damages on copyright?

As long as it's at least $7 the math still holds, even if they'd stopped shipping iOS6 after the first weekend.

It's also not a copyright claim, but a trademark claim. Different type of lawsuit altogether.

I doubt they'd want to win the lawsuit either.

That would posit that "mere design" is not something defensible, which would invalidate a lot of lawsuits by apple itself.

Apple makes $21 million (in profit, not revenue) every 3 hours. It makes sense for them to make this go away to avoid damage to their brand more than anything. Also, considering how litigious Apple has been lately as an opportunity cost of the use of their legal team fighting this sort of thing in court is probably not a good idea.

More so, the money they would pay to the Swiss Federal Railway will come out of a heaped up mound of money that Apple would have trouble bringing back to the US anyway (due to tax implications). Overall this is a fairly sane move on Apple's part. Get it out of the way, and move on.

They could add a snarky comment to it as well saying only some countries thought the watch design was the same, and Apple's watch was cooler anyway.

Well, they're paying 21 million dollars to:

1) Continue using the clock. If they lost the lawsuit, they would have to stop.

2) Not admit they are wrong.

3) Avoid a very public trial that competitors could point to and say "Apple copies too!"

All of those are probably worth more to Apple than the actual lawsuit damages.

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