In an move reminiscent of Apple"s recent fiasco with the iPhone 4, Nokia sent the police after a blogger to recover an unreleased smartphone. Eldar Murtazin published a harsh review of the Nokia N8 back in April which Nokia didn"t appreciate. The phone isn"t scheduled to be released until August.
The day after Eldar"s review Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson created a blog post titled "One of our children is missing" begging for the phones return.
"Frankly, we pride ourselves on trust at Nokia, and someone has greatly betrayed that. However, whilst we are determined to protect our intellectual property and maintain the surprise when a shiny new gadget is introduced, we are not going to do so at the expense of the working conditions we enjoy here at Nokia. We are not the Secret Police, and we want to maintain our culture of openness. We won’t let days like yesterday alter that. So now that the official news is out, we’d like our prototype back. Please."
Eldar refused to return the phone, despite Nokia asking nicely, so now several months later they have resorted to calling on the Russian police to recover the device. Nokia released a statement on their official blog,
"To be perfectly clear, we are defending our intellectual property by asking for the return of all unauthorised property in Mr. Murtazin’s possession. This is not about attacking bloggers or people who give critical reviews of our products. So as we don’t confuse the issue, while this individual does operate a blog, he is also very public about being a ‘consultant’ to other international mobile manufacturers. He has confirmed he is in possession of unauthorised Nokia prototypes and other intellectual property, and we have asked for their return."
According to Eldar"s personal blog, he never formally heard from Nokia about the phone and was surprised when an officer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs showed up at his door step.