iPhone clone maker threatens to sue Apple over iPhone 5 design

In what could be a case of patent-related absurdity or Apple getting a taste of its own medicine, a Chinese firm is planning to sue Apple for supposedly modeling its upcoming iPhone 5 after the former's Android-powered GooPhone i5.

 

A Chinese tech site said phone maker GooPhone patented the design of the new iPhone 5 in China "before Apple ha(d) had chance" - but appeared to base its design on "leaked iPhone 5 components which keep cropping up across China."

 

"Like the iPhone 5 design, the GooPhone I5 is basically a much larger iPhone 4S with a 4-inch screen, smaller dock connector and larger external speaker grills along with a headphone rack on the bottom rather than on the top," GizChina.com said.

 

Still, it said GooPhone's alleged patenting of the design in China could effectively block Apple from selling the iPhone in the Chinese market.

 

The threat also comes amid Apple's war with Samsung Electronics over smartphone patents.

 

"(It) may even mean GooPhone (will) have the right to block iPhone 5 exports completely!" it added.

 

Even more interesting, the GooPhone i5 is expected to launch a little after the genuine iPhone 5 later this month.

 

Its internals reportedly include an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core 1.4Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, Android 4.0 ICS with an iOS 6 theme, an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 4-inch screen with a display resolution of 1280 x 720.

 

Meanwhile, a separate article on Gizmodo branded the potential threat of the GooPhone to iPhone as: "Surreal? Hilarious? Pathetic? All of the above."

 

It said Hong Kong-based GooPhone, which designed the "cheapo Android phone" after the iPhone 5 parts leaked during the last few months, argues it released its clone first, so everything that comes after that must be a copy.

 

"In other words: since their clone was released first, that makes it the original phone. The iPhone 5 is the actual clone, not theirs," it said. — TJD, GMA News