eiPott

In this blog I’ve often mentioned the name of my late friend Bertrand Dufresne, who passed away 10 years ago this year. Despite all the good memories I have with him, I wanted to remember him through an object he offered me once. The eiPott was this short-lived thingy made by Koziol in 2010: a small, colorful plastic dish where you could eat a hard-boiled egg. The name (and the very shape of the thing, really) comes from the German words “Ei” (meaning “Egg”) and “Pott” (meaning… “pot”). And needless to say, the name was a pun around the word “iPod”, whereby in German you would pronounce “eiPott” similarly. Of course Apple did not appreciate the joke, as the Mac Observer and many other news outlets reported back in the day. It was far more than a simple “cease-and-desist” thing; Apple literally took the infringement to the courts, and a German judge sided with Steve Jobs on this one. The settlement involved some fines and everything. I remember posting a message on Twitter (remember?…