The whole article is just plain weird. They make it sound like a personal slight, and not a legal battle pitting two companies with a history of questionable behavior against each other.

As others have noted, it was far from a slam-dunk case that what Franklin did was illegal or unethical. "You could even pull a card out of an Apple and plug it in" is not exactly the rhetorical death blow that the author of this article was aiming for.