All eyes on Norway today, as an Oslo court will decide on Apple’s appeal in their suit against professional repairer Henrik Huseby. Apple sued him for using refurbished mobile screens. They lost last year but appealed.
Background
@Kaja_Juul_Skarbo (from Restarters Oslo) is in touch with Huseby’s lawyers, and is planning on dropping by the hearing. We are in touch the author of the story above, so we are hoping whatever happens for some good coverage.
Apparently Huseby will have to wait another two weeks (or more!) for a judgement. We’re going to talk with @Kaja_Juul_Skarbo about how we might be able to help in some way.
In the meantime, we can all enjoy Louis Rossman’s remote testimony to the Norwegian court. He posted it on YouTube 
Huseby is quoted in this Norwegian website, (machine translation with corrections)
“This is my job and what I live off of. I stand for what I do and don’t want to bow to Apple’s threats and demands. Apple wants a monopoly on repairs, so they do not sell original spare parts. I’m standing up for what I think is right”
Watch out for a Motherboard article, and potentially more media in coming weeks.
Here’s the latest: Apple won against Huseby. The court found the screens counterfeit, based on limited analysis of the glass on the refurbished screen assemblies. Lots of technicalities and annoying details, but in the end Apple is nearly successful in preventing third party repairers access to the best spare parts.
Huseby is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court. The machine translation here is truly awful, but…
Here’s a decent translation of the article above, by @Kaja_Juul_Skarbo
Huseby-case in Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.pdf (173.0 KB)
Here is my comment on the court decision:
https://www.smart.uio.no/blog/we-all-lose-in-the-case-that-apple-won.html
Originally published in the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv on July 16.
In the SMART project we are organising a team of legal experts to support Huseby in preparing for the appeal to the Supreme Court.
What a travesty. I hope the Norwegian Supreme Court does the right thing.
This is maddening, enraging, stupefying, disheartening…and I still use an iPhone SE.
Henrik Huseby has to decide next week if he appeals to the Supreme Court (Høyesterett) in Norway. His main concern is financial. He is worried that if he loses, his bill will be even higher. There is a crowdfunding site for him, organised by the Green Party:
https://culturaflokk.no/prosjekt/støtt-uavhengige-reparatører/7894a7fb-c791-444f-b0eb-921409750c60
Support henrik Huseby!!!
Thanks for the update @Maja_van_der_Velden. We’ve been talking with European partners with the soon-to-be-launched Right to Repair campaign about how best to support. We’ll have more news ASAP!
Meanwhile, it’s great to see the Norwegian crowdfunder already launched and gaining support.
Just to say that Apple is pursuing this legal strategy of attacking small repair businesses in new countries/jurisdictions and it’s something we need to consider systematically/strategically. And hopefully proactively.
I translated Henrik Huseby’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
Unofficial_Translation_Appeal_Henrik_Huseby.pdf (111.3 KB)
He also started a Gofundme site - to reach a more international audience:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/tq36g8-support-the-right-to-repair
Greetings, Maja
Thanks @Maja_van_der_Velden, very helpful - we suggested that he changes the currency to an international one, so that it’s easier to donate for people outside Norway (who might be confused by Norwegian krones) - we’ll then promote the site
News in this case:
Update: Huseby’s case is, as many other things, affected by the covid-19 virus. The hearing in the supreme court was supposed to be held yesterday, but have been postponed due to the situation with the virus. Norway is in lock-down and yesterday they prolonged the lock-down to April 13th, so no new date is communicated yet. Sad for Huseby that this already long-lasting case is dragging out in time, but the good news is that it gives us more time to promote the crowdfunder:)
Thanks for the update @Kaja_Juul_Skarbo, are you doing an extra push on the Norwegian crowdfunder?
Should @Chloe be adding more calls to support Huseby to the Right to Repair Europe communications in coming days/weeks?
I think we will need Huseby to publish an update on the English campaign @ugo
No problem! No, the norwegian crowdfunder is no longer active, it was closed for donations in September and was organized by a green party local politician. It has gathered 107K NOK. We have only pushed the international campaign and will do an extra push for that one in the coming weeks:) We spoke to Chloe about this last week as well, it’s super that the R2R-campaign is pushing for donations as well. Fingers crossed!
Wow that’s a lot of cash! Generous Norwegians 
what happens to the cash if he wins? 
There have been some big donations in recent weeks to Huseby, thanks to a German article and a little extra noise by @Chloe - thanks for keeping up the support from Norway
We realised we never posted an update to the story on this thread!
As many of you know, Apple in the end won this case at the Supreme Court, based on trademark law. The ruling left us unconvinced, among other reasons because it doesn’t address whether the imported screens might have been refurbished, therefore including a majority of reused components - the best scenario, from an environmental perspective. The Supreme Court accepted Apple’s assessment of whether some specific trademarks were fake or not, not requiring any additional third party assessment.
For many repair businesses this is a worrying outcome, as Apple (or others!) could go after them next time, in Norway or anywhere in Europe, for importing non-authorised parts. We wrote about this in June as part of the European Right to Repair campaign, including with an op-ed by @Maja_van_der_Velden:
Thanks to all those who donated to Henrik Huseby’s crowdfunder, which has reached over 10,000eu (in addition to the 5,700eu initially raised in Norway) . In case you can support him, Henrik is still collecting donations to cover the costs he incurred for legal fees and the 23,000eu he was asked to pay Apple:
