Original Apple Contract Goes for Less Than What Apple Spends in Lobbying

Every week, makes news with technology developments, business deals and, more often than not, controversies.

That’s where our weekly "Core Bytes" column on Apple comes in. We’ll relay the past week’s news highlights from our favorite backyard tech giant.

Controversies

• Apple’s legal staff has job security as long as companies such as Cequint keep filing complaints against the company. Cequint, a Seattle-based company that is a part of data communications service TNS Inc., is suing the iPhone maker for two patent infringements on caller ID technology, according to ZDNet. Cequint is seeking unspecified damages as well as trying to prevent Apple from selling the iPhone.

Doing Business

• Getting what you want is costly business. Apple spent $460,000 to lobby the government in the third quarter according to ABC News. That kind of money would pay for about 460 students to attend De Anza College for one semester—give or take a unit or two, plus books, fees and such. The company's spending is up 35 percent from what it spent in the same quarter last year, but down 42 percent from the $790,000 spent in the second quarter of 2011. But that money ain’t nothin’ compared to the $1 trillion Apple and its tech cohorts such as Google, and Cisco Systems seek in a tax holiday to bring back offshore profits, according to BusinessWeek.
• Keep your friends close and your enemies closer goes the saying. Apple reportedly hired Jan-Michael Cart, a University of Georgia student, as an intern. Cart is a UI concept designer who created a mock up of Siri, the new iPhone’s virtual personal assistant.

Wow Factor

• When does three pieces of paper equal $1.6 million? When it’s the contract that got it all started for Apple as a company. Sotheby’s reported on Tuesday that buyer, Eduardo Cisneros, chief executive officer of Cisneros, outbid 20 people in the room where the auction was held, as well as six telephone and online bidders for the contract. That original was signed by co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, as well as Ronald Wayne, the guy whose decision to back out of the contract just days later cost him an estimated $36 billion, according to Bloomberg News.