Wow, that sounds like outright extortion or at least the threat of malicious prosecution (a civil wrong, not a criminal wrong). I'm sure I'm mistaken but I would think you can say, "If you don't stop doing this thing I'm going to take legal action to get you to stop doing that thing." But saying, "If you don't stop doing something that is not illegal nor a violation of anything I'm going to take legal action for doing something totally unrelated I'm claiming you're doing." sounds pretty illegal to me.

For instance if I want your land I might say, "Sell me your land or I will sue you for copyright infringement."

Too typical....

Originally Posted by MikBe

Wow, that sounds like outright extortion or at least the threat of malicious prosecution (a civil wrong, not a criminal wrong). I'm sure I'm mistaken but I would think you can say, "If you don't stop doing this thing I'm going to take legal action to get you to stop doing that thing." But saying, "If you don't stop doing something that is not illegal nor a violation of anything I'm going to take legal action for doing something totally unrelated I'm claiming you're doing." sounds pretty illegal to me.

For instance if I want your land I might say, "Sell me your land or I will sue you for copyright infringement."

Steve crApple's (and other's) world domination mindset... what else is new?

So let me see if I have this right: Steve makes a threat against Palm out of anger -- which would, yes, have been illegal -- and Palm responds by reminding him that the threat was illegal. As far as I can tell, Apple never took any action on the threat, probably on the advice of its own counsel. We don't have a record of whether Steve later apologized, but knowing him I'd doubt an apology exists. :)

Google, on the other hand, responds by saying they're all in favour of this thing they KNOW is illegal, but let's do it without a paper trail so we don't get caught.

I don't know about you, but I've said plenty of stupid crap when I'm angry that wouldn't have been practical to act on in the cold light of day (and thus, I didn't). So an outburst by Steve that didn't result in any concrete actions doesn't seem to me to be anything other than normal private human interaction.

Schmidt, on the other hand, reveals EVERYTHING you need to know about his character right there. I'll take Jobs' bad temper over a lying rat weasel like Schmidt any day, and I hope the judge notices the difference as well. That troltrolltroller prefers Schmidt's approach tells you everything you need to know about him as well, methinks ...