Apple Nixes iPad Giveaways 388
KingSkippus writes "According to a story at CNN, Apple has begun enforcing third party promotion guidelines (PDF) that, among other things, restricts organizations from giving away iPads, using the word 'free' to describe any Apple products in a prominent manner, or promoting giveaways of iPod Touches in lots of less than 250 and with Apple's explicit approval."
Only applies to special purchases. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ok? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you not seen "FREE iPad" and FREE iPhone" spam? Real spam in emails and forums, but also just endlessly repeated web-adverts. It pisses people off. Apple don't want that bad-will to reflect on their products. The reputation of the products and the company are worth far more than the piddling amounts of product that promoters would buy from Apple to run these promotions. Especially as most of them are scams.
Re:They did what now? (Score:4, Interesting)
You want case law? Levi's prevented Tesco selling their Levi jeans in their store. Not by cutting off supply... they couldn't do that as the jeans were bought on the grey market. But by using their trademark rights.
http://www.managingchange.com/dynamic/levi.htm [managingchange.com]
(Read all the way to "Levi knocks out Tesco in round 3", don't stop at the first paragraph, or you'll get the wrong impression.)
To cut off "legitimized scalpers"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I currently live (Singapore), the iPad 2 was advertised as "available now!" for several days, but if you ask for one the store will tell you they're out of stock.
Meanwhile we got so many ad promotions with the magic words "win a free ipad 2" everywhere we turned, from restaurants to supermarkets to banks.
Long story short: People who wanted them can't buy them for weeks because they've been snapped up by companies intending to give them away instead of selling them. I think Apple is simply preventing this situation from happening again.