Last Updated on November 8, 2015 by Mathew Diekhake
When watching the video clip below you might think you were watching the intro to an 80’s TV sitcom more than an advertisement made in 2013 promoting the new Asian sensation iPhone rip-off called, ioPhone.
Once you get past the cheesy music, though, you can begin to see what appears to be an iPhone 5S, unless you are close enough to see that the logo doesn’t have any resemblance what-so-ever to the Apple one, and indeed, it could be this that makes it perfectly legal.
Out of all the patents Apple does against its biggest competitors, there’s nothing they can do from stopping a no-name brand from legally obtaining the rights to a similar named phone unless Apple went to the efforts of claiming it first. In this case it seems they didn’t bother to trademark this one.
Whether the Cupertino company care about the situation or not is anything matter, but there is nothing wrong with you going out and purchasing one of these cheaper options if you don’t have the money for the real thing.
When it comes to Asian countries, this kind of thing is all too familiar, and there is always a bunch of phones, as well as any accessories, that go with it that are knocked-off from the original designs — you may remember the iPhone 5S gold cases that were a $2 option for getting your fast and free gold iPhone that was next to impossible to get after the first release.
Sometimes these Smartphones can cause tragedy to unsuspecting victims, though, and that needs to be stamped out. For that reason, it’s good to expose these mobiles for what they are so the public is aware that they are out there.
If we go back in time, there was an infamous case of a man being fooled into paying top dollar for a fake iPhone 3gS via online shopping over at eBay. The sellers are very canny with their wording, and have you been losing out-of-pocket if you fall for their tricks more often than it is the other way around where they are ordered to pay you back.
On a lighter note, there’s certainly nothing wrong with coughing up the small fee and walking around with this one if it makes you feel good about 10% of the population thinking you had the iPhone 5C.