[NewsPoster]

The company that brought an accusation of patent infringement against Apple may not be in the phone manufacturing business anymore, according to a report. Shenzhen Baili, the entity which successfully got the Beijing Intellectual Property Office to put a ban on the iPhone 6 in the country, is believed to be no longer in operation, with an investigation claiming the smartphone producer "barely exists."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Baili's phones ring but never get answered, associated websites are closed, and its three registered office addresses remain empty. While Baili and parent company Digione were apparently fully active in December 2014 when the complaints were made to regulators about the design infringements, both companies effectively collapsed by "buggy products, mismanagement, and fierce competition," and hasn't shown any presence on the Chinese smartphone market for the last year.

Despite not offering products, and the two companies being insolvent according to financial reports, Apple is still facing opposition over the patent infringement matter. Andy Yang, the lawyer working on behalf of Digione claims Baili will continue to fight Apple in court over the patents, advising to the report "Shenzhen Baili is still operational in its necessary functions." Yang also suggests the suit could be expanded to cover the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. "The issue here is not whether Digione makes phones anymore, but whether the iPhone 6 infringes on this patent."

Even though it is subject to a ban, Apple insists to the report the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and later iPhones are all still available for sale in China. Apple has vowed to fight the regulator's decision.

[Inkling]

If Apple management read serious history rather than listened to Bono it would understand what is happening. China's rapid industrialization in the late twentieth is creating a similar madness to what happened to Germany in the late nineteenth century when it underwent a similar process. Called Sonderweg by historians, Germany displayed an overweaning pride leading to military bullying and an aggressive desire to drive industrialization still faster to ensure what one Kaiser called Germany's "place in the sun." For more details see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderweg Today's events are much the same. One minor illustration is that the Chinese government wants iPhones to be built in China but not sold there. Its aggressive behavior in the South China Sea is a more vivid example. And what do we have to counter that? An administration that has conducted the most incompetent foreign policy in our nation's history. For its inability to understand that, Apple management should declare itself a "thought-free zone."