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Apple Could Lose $1.6 Billion In iPad Lawsuit
redletterdave writes "Proview Technology, which currently uses the 'iPad' name on several of its products including computer monitors, stands to win up to $1.6 billion and an apology from Apple for allegedly infringing upon Proview's trademarked name to use on its bestselling tablet. Proview International, which owns subsidiaries Proview Technology in Shenzhen and Proview Electronics in Taiwan, originally registered the name 'iPad' in Taiwan in 2000 and mainland China in 2001. Proview eventually sued Apple in 2011, and even though the Cupertino-based company retaliated with a counter-suit of its own, Apple lost the case in local Chinese courts. Depending on the court's findings, Apple could be fined anywhere from $38 million to the $1.6 billion that Proview is seeking. In addition to the money, Proview also wants Apple to apologize. 'We have prepared well for a long-term legal battle,' said one of Proview's lawyers."
I don't think directly or indirectly threatening the Chinese government is in Apple's best interests. All the government would have to do is threaten to shut down Apple's Chinese manufacturing facilities and they'd be back to square one. Given how defensive Apple is about their own trademarks, I do find the whole spectacle amusing now that they've been caught in hypocrisy on that count. With that said, I'm sure they'll work out a backroom deal of some kind, everybody will save face in some way, and life will go on.
China government is there to protect Chinese IP and US government is here to protect US IP. Nothing will change.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
No... Chinese gov't protects the Chinese and the US gov't protects the top 1% of shareholders who import the Chinese crap. Don't start thinking that the government protects US IP or US people in general. They don't do that.
No, this is the cost of doing business poorly. A trademark search needs to be international in scope if you plan on making an international product. On top of damages Apple should be prohibited from further infringement (rename the product in countries with a previously registered trademark). There was a similar debacle (within the US registry if I remember) over the iPhone. I think it was settled, but the infringing product (Apple's iPhone) should have been pulled off the shelves, relabeled, and future infringement explicitly prohibited. It seems that Apple only cares about IP when they can use it to keep others out of their business - the evidence here is that they don't even bother looking to see if they infringe in a direction they want to go.
There is a place where they could go where there is a whole huge pool of workers who have had their rights trampled, their savings destroyed, and their ability to think dismantled in a systematic way for decades. It is called The United States and there are people there who will jump at the chance to get a job, no matter how terrible the conditions, how grueling the work, or how poorly compensated they are.
Of course, we're not talking Chinese slave wages, but close.
At Foxconn salaries? You are on drugs if you think so.
Mind you that I would love to see these jobs back in the US, but you are engaging in wishful, triumphalist thinking. These jobs, and all of those jobs WILL NOT COME BACK. Furthermore, it is unreasonable, however much we love this country, to presume replacing $1/hour Chinese workers (if they are lucky) with no benefits such as sick leave with $15/hour (at least) US workers with all the minimal benefits one would typically according to the law.
If it is not China, there is India, or the Philippines or Indonesia or Thailand or Ghana or Brazil or Argentina or Central America or Romania... shall I go on? The time where the majority of the world lived in violent stone age conditions is gone (most likely forever.) New markets and manufacturing grounds are available all over the world.
From a purely capitalistic point of view, it makes no sense to do mind-numbing manufacturing in the US. Even if you were to improve working conditions in China, it will still be immensely cheap. Even in countries with a strong stakeholder's capitalist mentality like Japan are finding out harder and harder to keep tricket-manufacturing jobs within their own borders.
The only way for the US to get these jobs back is with heavy government involvement, greater subsidies (meaning higher taxes), all the stuff that our bovine collective calls "socialism" in a brain-dead, knee-jerking fashion.
Those jobs ain't coming back Sonny boy. We are simply not capable of competing for them anymore. We demand greater salaries and we have higher costs of living than our foreign competitors (not to mention that our competitors actually produce HS graduates that know how to read, write and add fractions, which we don't.)
In other words, unless we do something else entirely, we are in deep shit.