Hacker News Reader

> The implication is that we are correctly enforcing trademark law... Or are you saying that anyone should be allowed to import anything with anyone's brand on it?

I think what's being said (well, implied) is that the first-sale doctrine states that those trademark rights are limited, and that by blocking imports, those right may be being violated (specifically, the right to resell).

If that's the case, that would mean that we are incorrectly enforcing trademark law.

Edit: To make it absolutely clear what I'm talking about, if I as a U.S. citizen go to China, and I have some used iphones, and I try to ship them to the U.S. after people buy them from me, does Apple's special handling prevent me from reselling Apple products? If so, that may be violating my rights.

I agree with the first sale doctrine.

In the cases which have been popularised in the media recently, we're talking about products where a "first sale" has not occurred.

> we're talking about products where a "first sale" has not occurred.

Well, you seemed to distill the initial point to that, and then reject it, but I didn't interpret it as something so specific at all. Essentially it looked like a Straw Man argument.

If the details of this are specifically linked to that case, and there's no indication that it's happening to other types of shipment (a weakening of the original points presented that you responded to), that should have been specifically noted (is it? I don't know. I haven't been following this). Otherwise, you aren't really addressing the same thing as the comment you responded to (unless derefr is specifically talking about this incident, without mentioning this incident. That's possible).

I'm responding specifically to the cases which have hit the media in the past few weeks and months.

I'm not interested in arguing hypotheticals. If there's a specific incident that you want me to remark on, I'll be happy to provide my opinion on it.

According to the phrasing of the complaint, it was the use of the Apple logo on the batteries and not the batteries themselves that CBP took issue with. “It is assumed that if something has that Apple logo on it, it must be counterfeit,” Rossmann said. “It couldn't be that someone who has these batteries sold them to me. It couldn’t be that someone took these batteries out of machines that were on demo in stores….machines that they owned, packaged them up and sent them to me,” Rossmann said. “No, they must be counterfeit. There’s no other explanation for it.” [1]

It is possibly the items were counterfeit. But the information as presented does not make that case. They've been called refurbished. Until a case is made that they are counterfeit that includes more evidence than "it has an Apple logo on it", it makes sense to assume they were not given the statements about their providence.

So all my arguments to this point can be taken to apply to this specific case, and you can feel free to provide your opinion.

1: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3ppvj/dhs-seized...

I'm not familiar with Rossman's battery case, but those same laws have been used to stop shipments of refurbished Apple parts. I believe it was iPad Rehab this happened to most famously. They would disassemble an iPhone, send the display assembly (broken glass, LCD intact) to China, they would replace the glass and send it back. Because the LCD had an Apple logo on it, it was seized. But the LCD was genuine - it came directly out of an iPhone. That's equivalent to stopping the sale of a used car, just because it had the tires replaced with third-party ones, but still bares the maker's logo.

To my knowledge they had Apple logos because they were Apple products.

Maybe there's more to it but that's what I understood so far.

Removing the Apple logo from Apple products in order to ship them to the states so they can be used to fix Apple products seems unnecessary.

Louis Rossmann has said himself that he commissioned the batteries from a factory in China that was no longer authorized to make those batteries, because likely they lost the bid/contract to do so.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9pow06/louis_rossman...

That makes the parts counterfeit if they bear an Apple logo. All Louis had to do is source the exact same parts without the Apple logo printed on them. That's not difficult, nor is it unreasonable.

> "Removing the Apple logo from Apple products in order to ship them to the states so they can be used to fix Apple products seems unnecessary."

Putting an Apple logo on something that is not an Apple product seems unnecessary.

These parts are not Apple products. In order for a product to be an Apple product, it has to have been sold by, through or under license from Apple at some point in its life.

These were not, which makes them counterfeit by definition. They might be perfectly identical to the real thing, they might be slightly inferior, or they might be dangerous junk. You don't know.

Wasn't the whole point of the Louis Rossmann imports and similar stories with LCD screens a few months back that these were in fact refurbished Apple products? From what I've read they had the Apple logo on a connector or something because that part of the product was original. In the car analogy, if I repair my car by replacing or refurbishing a broken part and clearly stating that fact when I resell it, would that make it a counterfeit car?

The purpose of trademarks should fundamentally be to ensure the consumer is fully aware of just what they are buying, it should never be to prevent purchases.

A consumer should always, 100% be able to purchase a "counterfeit" product should they so desire it.