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Luxpro seeks $100M from Apple after legal battle

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit

Luxpro wants $100 million in damages from Apple after prevailing in a legal skirmish over whether its Tangent MP3 players are iPod Shuffle ripoffs.

Luxpro's was one of the most talked-about devices at the 2005 Cebit show in snowy Hanover, Germany. Not because it did anything really cool, but because it looked almost exactly Apple's iPod Shuffle introduced two months earlier at Macworld.

Predictably, Apple was not amused. Luxpro changed the name to the Super Tangent, but Apple filed suit in Taiwan asking for a cease and desist order. That was granted, but Luxpro managed to prevail in a series of appeals as well as in a challenge before Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission.

Now, Luxpro wants $100 million to make up for the loss of revenue it suffered while litigating the matter with Apple, and says it intends to file suit against Apple. It charged that Apple insisted resellers remove the Tangent devices from their shelves or lose the right to sell iPods. An Apple representative declined to comment on the matter.

The newer Tangent MP3 players have a display, unlike the iPod Shuffle, but otherwise they are pretty similar to the old iPod Shuffle design. Check out this Engadget post from March 2005, and look at Apple's original iPod Shuffle, for a better comparison.