Apple squashes unauthorized MacBook battery maker

HyperMac powered off

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 18th October 2010 20:44 GMT

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Apple's legal team has succeeded in forcing the only company to offer external MacBook batteries and chargers — HyperMac, a division of China's Sanho Digital Electronics — to cease selling said products.

"As part of our ongoing comprehensive licensing negotiations with Apple regarding a wide array of technologies and issues," reads a "Dear Valued Customers" message on the Cupertino-quashed company's home page on Monday, "we have decided to cease the sale of the MacBook charging cables and car charger on November 2, 2010."

HyperMac's Apple-angering transgression was that their devices use Apple's patented MagSafe power connector — an offense that prompted Jobs & Co. to slap them with a patent-infringement lawsuit late last month.

There's a wee bit of irony here, in that Apple is currently involved in legal wrangling over a lawsuit filed against it in May of last year by a trio of plaintiffs who claimed that their MagSafe connecters may have been mag, but certainly weren't safe. Their suit alleges "flawed and dangerous Adapters which prematurely fail and present fire hazards."

In any case, HyperMac won't find its own MagSafe-equipped adapters causing any such problems in the future: "On November 2, 2010 00:00 U.S. Pacific Time," HyperMac notes on their website, "they will gone for good." ®

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