While newspapers continue to cover the Samsung-Apple tablet and smart phone patent battle in the court room. A much smaller case has recently developed over toy tablets.
Meet Nabi. The Nabi was introduced by Fuhu (a company made up by Acer, Foxconn, and Kingston) back in late 2011. The Nabi is a tablet computer but is designed for children, it offers popular games like Angry Birds and also educational software. At launch it was announced that Toys R US (a popular big box toy store in North America) would be the exclusive distributor of the tablet. Excutives in both companies were very excited about the product, expecting it to be a big hit during the 2011 Christmas season.
However, Fuhu was not happy. Fuhu complains that Toys R US did virtually no promotion and as such only sold 20,000 units and failed to reorder. Their agreement was terminated shortly afterwards in January 2012.
So, Toys R US, no longer selling the Nabi wanted to come up with a solution for the 2012 Christmas season. Meet the Tabeo-
The Tabeo looks startling similar to the Nabi. So Fuhu is launching a court case against Toys R US for design infringement. They especially noted the rubber bumper around the edge of both devices, and that both devices ran on an Android Ecosystem. Personally I find both designs very similar. It makes me wonder what Toy’s R US was thinking ….. turning a sour relationship even more sour.
I did find Fuhu’s settlement demands to be excessive. They stated they want every Tabeo turned over to their company and an unspecified amount of money. Why do they need all the devices? Do they want to burn them or something? Just claim monetary damages and be happy – my opinion.
sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19711476