Yeah, obviously, but why not just backpedal by pushing an update that uses a different watch design? Surely the damages from showing their users a copyrighted watch design for a month or so would be less than 21 million.
Given that willful copyright infringement can carry a fine up to $150k per instance, a mere 140 copies of the offending OS could attract a $21 million fine. Given that ~3 million iPads with the clock shipped in the first weekend it was available, the fine for those devices alone would approach half a trillion dollars. With an entire month's worth of sales out the door, the Swiss Railway could end up owning Apple several times over - if Apple suffered the maximum fine.
Of course, all of this is completely insane. And it's not like Apple's legal folks would take an existential threat lying down. Even so, it still reflects the lunatic reality of copyright law, which is something that any sane legal team will go out of its way to avoid. That being the case, $21 million represents an extraordinarily good settlement.
Apple makes $21 million (in profit, not revenue) every 3 hours. It makes sense for them to make this go away to avoid damage to their brand more than anything. Also, considering how litigious Apple has been lately as an opportunity cost of the use of their legal team fighting this sort of thing in court is probably not a good idea.
More so, the money they would pay to the Swiss Federal Railway will come out of a heaped up mound of money that Apple would have trouble bringing back to the US anyway (due to tax implications). Overall this is a fairly sane move on Apple's part. Get it out of the way, and move on.
This is what I thought too. Isn't $21M a bargain to pay for a 70 years split test or proof of concept done by Swiss, who incidentally were the best clock designers and makers for centuries? Whatever you call it I feel like Apple is well off for this certainly intentional reference to the top notch product.
