Apple lost a trademark dispute in China in December last year, after it accused local company Proview Technology of owning and using the iPad trademark in an illegal way. The Chinese court rejected the Apple suit, so Proview won and got to keep the iPad name, that they had from 2000 for use in China. And now it’s time for Apple to come up with the appeal…
The Cupertino giant filed for the appeal with the Higher People’s Court of Guangdong Province on January 5th 2012, after the original case was lost in the last month of 2011. The initial claims were that Apple purchased legally the iPad trademark in 2010 from British company IP Applications, that in turn bought the rights form a Taiwanese Proview subsidiary. That didn’t stand in court, so the Shenzhen Municipal Court decided against Apple. The problem here is that the Shenzhen company did not attend negotiations, so the deal made through the subsidiary isn’t worth a penny.
Proview’s now demanding legal fee compensation of 4 million yuan or around $636,000, as part of the recent appeal. The Chinese firm also started two lawsuits of its own, looking to ban iPad sales, but the cases are pending. I smell a settlement in this case, that unless Samsung decides to jump in the boat and try to attack Apple when it’s weak…
