Tile to Testify Before Congress About Unreleased, Unannounced Apple Product

Nandita Bose, writing for Reuters:

In April 2019, Tile.com, which helps users find lost or misplaced items, suddenly found itself competing with Apple Inc, after years of enjoying a mutually beneficial relationship with the iPhone maker.

Apple carried Tile on its app store and sold its products at its stores since 2015. It even showcased Tile’s technology at its biggest annual event in 2018 and the startup sent an engineer to Apple’s headquarters to develop a feature with the company’s voice assistant Siri.

Early the following year, Tile’s executives read news reports of Apple launching a hardware product along with a service that resembled what Tile sold. By June, Apple had stopped selling Tile’s products in stores and has since hired away one of its engineers.

It sucks to get Sherlocked. But is there anything vaguely illegal here? And it seems… premature to testify before Congress about a product Apple hasn’t even announced (and for all we know, never will). What exactly is Tile’s preferred remedy here?

★ Friday, 17 January 2020