In the face of legal threats from the manufacturer of Apple’s glass staircases, a former retail store employee remains defiant by re-auctioning a broken stair tread from the Fifth Avenue store on eBay. It’s not clear if Seele will bid on the item, or if the winning bidder will inherit the company’s legal claim of ownership of the tread. Mark Burstiner says he was working the night shift at the store in 2008, and watched as Germany-speaking Seele GmbH employees replaced three broken treads from the spiral staircase. After he got off work in the morning, he encountered the workers up-top at the curb, apparently waiting for a truck to haul away the glass treads.In a full account on Gizmodo and in an interview with IFO, Burstiner says he asked the crew for one of the treads, and the friendly workers helped him load the 250-pound piece into a cab so he could take it home. But after moving residences twice and not converting it to a coffee table, Burstiner decided to sell the laminated slab through eBay last week.
The appearance of the piece on eBay sparked an immediate phone call from a Seele executive, Burstiner says, who threatened him with legal action and demanded he return the piece, prompting him to end the auction. During subsequent telephone talks with Seele, Burstiner claimed the piece is his, that he didn’t steal it, and said he’s not giving it back.
Burstiner rebuffed an offer of money from Seele, ended any negotiations with them, and has now reposted the glass on eBay, in a three-day auction. In the updated listing, Burstiner reiterates that the auction winner must pick up the tread in New York City, or have it shipped at their own expense. Sending the tread cross-country through UPS Freight could cost upwards of $500. More ominously, the successful bidder could inherit Seele’s claim of ownership, and could have to return the tread, losing the money they paid to Burstiner in the auction. It’s also still possible that Seele will convince eBay the property belongs to them, and to remove the auction listing.
Update: The auction ended at 6:18 p.m. on March 2nd with a winning bid of $9,950 place by someone identified by eBay only as b****f. The person placed a single bid within 30 minutes of the auction being posted, which was eventually enough to win the tread. The winner has bid on only one item in the last 30 days, suggesting the bidder registered only to bidon the tread auction—and that Seele might be the winning bidder. Interestingly, three bidders entered wrong amounts and retracted their bids—one was for $100,500.
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Sounded like theft to me from the very beginning!!
The item does not belong to him for one very clear reason.
The workers were not in a position to give the item to him, they did not own it.
Therefore the workers have colluded in the theft of the item.
There seem to several analogies: Would it be appropriate for your mechanic to give away your car (or even tires) when the car was in for service? How about the plumber selling off your old sink after installing a new one? It seems as if the owner of property doesn’t give up ownership if a second party gives the property to a third party. And the fact that the property is damaged is irrelevant.
If Seele is going to claim that it was theft, they better have filed a police report back in 2008 and took appropriate actions to recover their property back. Did they question the workers? Check security tapes? Even notice it was missing? If they didn’t then any judge will deem that cracked stair as discarded refuse.
So, the key to getting away with theft is that no one reports it when it happens. I’ll think of that the next time I’m working at a bank. As long as I take the objects out of Lady Richington’s safe deposit box so that she doesn’t know it and doesn’t report it, she can’t say anything when she goes to get it after 20 years to hand down to her granddaughter and it’s not there!!!
Mwahahahaha! Bwahahahahaha!
I’m not sure that Seele has standing here. Did they install the staircase for free? That tread, seems to me, to be the property of Apple Inc. But then again maybe there is a law such as we have in California, where if you don’t check off on the work-order for you car repair your old parts belong to the repair garage. This doesn’t apply everywhere. I know that that when I do work as an electrical contractor, The client can ask for the old parts after the work is done. There is no prior request required as there is with car repair. Barring some prior deal with Apple I think the stair tread is the property of the Apple stockhoders.
Once you throw something away you are considered to have abandoned any rights of ownership. Selling tires off a car in for service is completely different from picking them up when they’re out with the curbside garbage… the former is theft, the second is legally not.
Secondly, patents prevent the production (or reproduction) of a protected product… they do not inhibit the resale of a patent protected product in the same way a used chevrolet, Dell or even an iMac can be resold despite the fact all 3 contain patented technology.
If there were any basis to this claim legal action would have happened by now. Its baseless and both Apple and Seele know it.
As it was not thrown away, but instead handed over to someone without the ‘owners’ permission, then the contractor has deemed to have stolen it (hence them trying to get it back). The person who has it now is a receiver of stolen goods (which he knows), and the buyer on eBay will also be the receiver of stolen goods.
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