[NewsPoster]

Apple has become the subject of another bout of litigation, this time one relating to the iPhone 6 in China. A small Chinese smartphone producer called Baili has complained to the Beijing Intellectual Property Office, claiming consumers cannot tell the "minute differences" between the 100C Android smartphone and the design Apple employed for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, with the regulator ordering a ban of the offending iPhones from sale in the market.

According to the Beijing Morning Post, spotted by Engadget, Apple is not accepting the complaint or the order, and has initiated litigation to prevent the ban from happening. Despite the order of the ban, Apple and its distributor are continuing to sell the iPhones in China, and will continue to do so until the administrative action filed by Apple is ruled upon.

Apple has a difficult history with China as a market, especially concerning intellectual property. The company has faced issues over the trademark of the term iPad, while the design of the iPhone 5 was copied by one manufacturer to create the Android-based i5, followed by the i5S the following year. More recently, a Chinese company won a court case over the iPhone trademark, allowing it to use the capitalized "IPHONE" brand on leather wallets, purses, and passport holders.

[Inkling]

Russians have told me that there's little internal software development in Russia because what is done gets stolen. China faces a similar problem. So many manufacturers steal ideas from others—here the iPhone's appearance—that virtually nothing creative happens. I might add that virturally any lawsuit about the appearance of smartphones or tablets is absurd. They're all rectangular and relatively thin, with few or no protuberances. Any differences are trivial.

[jdonahoe]

Why did you attach two pictures of the same phone? Ooooo, I think they might have a case. Not!

[Gathurm]

Given the Chinese history of IP theft (oh excuse me I meant creative R&D on a budget), I would find complaints such as this hysterically funny, except that so much is State sanctioned.