The apology Apple published after losing a UK court case to Samsung has not gone down well with the judge who told them to publish it. If you’ve read it you probably won’t be very surprised.
The statement was meant to clarify that the Galaxy Tab did not copy the design of the iPad as Apple had claimed. Instead, it mainly painted Apple in a positive light by talking about cases in other countries that had gone in the company’s favour and quoting the judge’s favourable comments about the iPad. It didn’t take a legal expert to realise that the court would want to have a word about it.
Looking past the specifics of this case, however, there’s something to be learnt from how the statement is written – especially its first section, which contains what is effectively the legal payload of the entire message. Here are the first two paragraphs:
On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic (UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do not infringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the High court is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1882.html.
In the ruling, the judge made several important points comparing the designs of the Apple and Samsung products:
“The extreme simplicity of the Apple design is striking. Overall it has undecorated flat surfaces with a plate of glass on the front all the way out to a very thin rim and a blank back…”
The most artful thing about the statement isn’t the point-scoring that follows (and which I’ve not included – see the full wording here) but the placement of the legally required statement within a thicket of technical-looking jargon that acts like chaff to the reader.
The eye starts tripping over the words as the various Galaxy Tab model numbers are repeated and then, upon detecting the intimidating-looking patent number a bit later on, decides to move on the more welcoming second paragraph. With any luck many readers will abandon that first paragraph before they read the three legally meaningful words – “do not infringe”.
Here’s that first paragraph again with the legal payload highlighted; see how it hides away from the reader, surrounded by stuff that your eye just wants to avoid:
On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic (UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do not infringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the High court is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1882.html.
It’s a deceptively simple trick but one that any devious writer would do well to master. If you’ve got an unwelcome message to deliver, boil its essence down to the smallest combination of words as possible, put it in a much longer and generally upbeat text, then clog up the sentence around the unwelcome words with as many numbers, hyphens and other gibberish as possible.
Next time you have an awkward email to write, why not give it a go? Although admittedly it may be difficult to pad an “it’s not me it’s you” type of email with technical specifications and patent numbers…