China pad peddler wins iPad name from Apple
Cupertino and local channel face legal barrage
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Apple and its Chinese resellers are facing a wave of legal action in the wake of a court ruling which found that Cupertino does not own the trademark to the iPad name in China.
The case stemmed from a $1.5bn claim by Hong Kong monitor manufacturer Proview International, which registered the IPAD trademark during an ill-fated attempt to break into the tablet market in 2000. It acquired the rights to the name in many countries between 2000 and 2004, and sold the “global trademark” to the name to Apple in 2006 for around $35,000, but later said this did not apply in China.
Apple sued Proview Technology (Proview International’s Taiwanese subsidiary) in order to get the rights to the trademark after being denied them by the Chinese government. This week the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court took Proview’s side on the matter, but granted Apple leave to appeal.
“Apple is such a Goliath and has a good image, so people wouldn’t imagine that Apple could possibly infringe on our intellectual property rights,” Xiao Caiyuan, a lawyer for Proview at Guangdong Guanghe law firm, told the Financial Times. “People always think it’s small companies infringing upon large companies’ IPR.”
Proview reacted quickly and has applied for an immediate halt to sales of the iPad by Apple resellers in the southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Huizhou, with the first hearings due in the next eight weeks. The company also has bigger plans for Apple’s Chinese reseller operations.
“We are starting with these two cities, and if we are successful in getting iPad sales stopped, we will consider going after Apple resellers elsewhere in China,” said Xie Xianghui, a lawyer with Grandall, another Chinese law firm working for Proview.
All is not lost for Apple. Even if it loses the appeal, it’s unlikely that the move will seriously hurt the company since it has enough money in the bank to meet any claims. Proview has made it clear that it’s willing to negotiate, and will probably get much bigger payoff than the deal it originally made.
“We hope that this decision will make our negotiations with Apple a bit easier,” said Li Su, a Proview representative. ®
COMMENTS
yeah, and pull all iPad manufacture
out of China as well.
Goodness - it must come as a shock to the Chinese that IP infringement can go the other way around!
Regardless of the merits of this particular case, it's amusing on a broad scale to see a Chinese company having to defend itself from IP issues out west. This is from a country where the auto manufacturers copy tooling down to the slightest detail - and even manage to copy *logos* wholesale (see BYD's old logo; it's basically a copy of the BMW logo with blue and white swapped and different letters).
My company gets quite a few inquiries from China, both on the purchase and business partnership side, but I'm honestly reticent about even selling anything there. I haven't got the horsepower to fight it if someone does a single-white-female on me.
Anyway, heading home, and it's cold. Time to put on my Gavin Klein gloves and warm up the Chery...
Apple would be fine ones to talk about the meaning of "global"
They (and other big corps) always talk about the global economy when it comes to outsourcing manufacturing and jobs, but scream blue murder if I try to buy their product more cheaply in the global marketplace.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
