It's interesting to consider from a legal perspective exactly why this <i>isn't</i> something a company is allowed to do. (Assuming the company did in fact intentionally damage people's chips, reversibly or not -- sounds like we don't know for sure yet?)<p>- Intentionally sabotaging someone's stuff, legally, is more or less the same as intentionally taking it. Keying a car and driving it away might have different names but are on the same scale.<p>- There ain't no self help. If you think someone else's stuff should actually be your stuff, your path is through a court.<p>- We don't fix things with injunctive relief that can be fixed with money. When Apple proves that Samsung violated a patent or vice versa, we don't collect and burn all the infringing phones, we just make someone cut a check. Because we are not idiots.<p>- The "someone" who cuts the check is Samsung or Apple, not their customers. As far as I know no one's managed to go after end users, even in extreme cases like a $10 designer handbag where the buyer obviously knows it's not real. (And it's at best unclear whether going after the buyers would make any sense, even in those extreme cases -- if someone pays knockoff prices for a knockoff product, it's the seller and not the buyer who has ill-gotten gains. There might be some additional reputation damage and lost profits that the buyer is complicit in, but it makes a lot more sense to me -- and apparently everyone else -- to make the seller pay for those as well.)<p>- When you <i>do</i> go after the seller of trademarked goods and want to seize those goods, we actually have a procedure for that -- Section 34 of the Lanham Act.[1] Which includes a whole bunch of protections like swearing out an affidavit, getting permission from a judge, informing the attorney general, posting a bond to cover damages, conducting the seizure through government agents, and keeping the seized items in the custody of the court. It's very much unlike showing up at someone's house and breaking their stuff.<p>(I am a lawyer; I am not a trademark lawyer; I just googled some stuff based on vague memories from law school to write this.)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/1116.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/1116.html</a>