LAWFUEL – The Law Newswire – The iPhone software code cracking has tak…

LAWFUEL – The Law Newswire – The iPhone software code cracking has taken a legal turn. The Uniquephones founder receives an ominous phone call discouraging him against proceeding with today’s expected software release, infoworld reports.

Fear of litigation has led to an indefinite delay in the planned Saturday release of software to unlock Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

John McLaughlin, founder of Uniquephones, based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, said Saturday that he received a phone call about 3 a.m. Saturday local time from a man claiming to be from O’Melveny & Myers LLP, an international law firm, calling on behalf of AT&T. The firm has worked with Apple in the past.

The man informed McLaughlin that if he posted the unlock code, he could be sued for copyright infringement and for dissemination of Apple’s intellectual property (IP).

McLaughlin was not completely awake when he took the call and did not get the full name of the person on the other end, he said. The man presented “friendly advice,” but because of the timing of the call and the fact that it came on a personal mobile phone that McLaughlin never uses for business, it felt more threatening than friendly.

“If he wants to give me advice, he could have sent me an e-mail,” McLaughlin said.

Spokespeople with O’Melveny & Myers, AT&T Wireless and Apple could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.

McLaughlin and his team had planned to release software by 2 p.m. EDT that he claims would unlock the iPhone so it could work with SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards from carriers other than AT&T Wireless.

Uniquephones set up the Web site right after the iPhone’s release on June 29 and had been working on the software since then.

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