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Chinese Court Orders Ban On Apple's iPad
zacharye writes "A lawyer representing Proview International on Monday announced that the Intermediate People's Court in Huizhou, a city in southern China, ruled that distributors should stop selling iPads in China. From the article: 'The ruling, which was also reported widely in China's state media, may not have a far-reaching effect. In its battle with Apple, Proview is utilizing lawsuits in several places and also requesting commercial authorities in 40 cities to block iPad sales. Apple Inc. said in a statement Monday that its case is still pending in mainland China. The company has appealed to Guangdong's High Court against an earlier ruling in Proview's favor.'"
"Proview International's shares have been suspended from trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since August 2010 and reports say it is deep in debt. It will be delisted in June if it cannot show it has sufficient assets, business operations and working capital."
SCO Mark 2?
That's all well and good, except for the fact that they paid for the trade mark.
FTA: "We bought Proview's worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago. Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter,"
looks like Apple should have patented the concept of Suing the competiton out of business.
I wonder what would happen if Apple told Foxconn to transition their work to another country (say India) within 18 months.
And the company that OWNS the trademark denies that the company that SOLD it had the right to do so.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
They paid from the trademark from the Taiwan affiliate. The mainland China Corporate office has denied that apple can use that trademark in mainland China and has denied permission for the Taiwan affiliate to sell that trademark for use in Mainland China. Keep spouting Apple's talking points there without telling the whole story though carry on.
Apple paid $4 to download the trademark from allofmp3.com, so it's theirs fair and square :)
And the company that OWNS the trademark denies that the company that SOLD it had the right to do so.
And Apple presented solid evidence in Taiwan that the company that OWNS the trademark was fully aware, fully involved in the negotiations, and fully approved the transaction--that the claim that the company that sold the trademark had no right to do so is a flat-out lie, invented after they found out the trademark rights had been sold to Apple.
Typically when you buy worldwide rights, it applies to the entire world, no?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/15/us-apple-proview-idUSTRE81E0BE20120215
I would think if Proview has an issue, then they need to speak to whoever was claiming to own the worldwide rights to the trademark, rather than Apple. Claiming they were developing a 'similar' technology in 2000 with absolutely nothing to show for the last 12 years is a stretch in the best of cases, where their current financial situation would more likely imply that they are simply trolling trying to stay afloat given they are already going under.
By all means though, post without telling the whole story...
The issue is whether the Taiwan operations had the right to sell to Apple. China believes they didn't. It's kind of like the SCO ownership of Unix... they didn't.
Good lord, what a load of crap to get modded insightful!
And before anyone chimes in about the Franklin saying "Franklin was licensed to make a compatible, but not to make one that's BETTER" is just full of crap.
Franklin did not have a license from Apple for anything at all. They just copied Apple's ROMs and OS on the theory that copyright would not apply, and they lost that gamble in court.
Psystar was a clever way to sell "Apple Compatibles" and should have been completely legal... they probably would have prevailed if they had a legal staff like Google's.
Well, if Psystar had sold "OS X ready" machines with instructions on how to get OS X installed and running, they might have been OK. But instead they modified OS X and sold the modified versions. Regardless of whether or not you think this should be legal, it clearly is not.
More likely, the PRC govt has determined that Taiwan (whom they view as a renegade province) should not dictate T&C to ANY entity of the PRC. Ergo, the sale of such an asset by company operating in Taiwan would BY DEFAULT have no bearing in the PRC.
The only licensed use was Bell and Howell's Apple II clone. You can find them around (they're in black cases).
Franklin's case is a bit muddy since Franklin claimed that since Apple published the schematics and ROM listing, they were free to take it and build their own. Which of course isn't true (otherwise it would doom Open Source as well - publishing the source code allows anyone to take it? No GPL advocate would go for that)
The other thing is the whole Hackintosh community was also against Psystar - they had to change their licensing of all the tools required from some freeware to explicitly "no commercial use allowed".
Anyhow, back on topic - the ProView "iPad" was actually an iMac-styled (this was back in 2000, remember, so it was the bulbuous one) appliance computer. Not even a tablet - just an iMac ripoff design for an internet appliance.
(Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/02/18/proviews-ipad-was-it-an-imac-or-an-ipaq/ images (marketing materials from Proview): http://micgadget.com/22151/proview-has-manufactured-20000-%E2%80%98ipad%E2%80%99-devices-this-is-what-it-looks-like/ ). Funny, apparently Compaq would have a much better claim against Apple with the iPaq...
If Psystar's selling of OS X against the licence (ie, free to ignore Apple's software licence at will for commercial gain) was ruled legal then the effect on things like the GPL would be catastrophic.
If one company is free to ignore a software licence and has been backed up by a court in such an enterprise, then what chance does the GPL have? Psystar could have rolled up some GPL code into their distribution, modified it and refused to release changes. How is that any different to wilfully ignoring Apple's licence terms for OS X?
Just because you disagree with them? That lawsuit affected all licences.
They could have released a machine that was 99% of what they had, just with no copy of OS X provided and they would have been fine (they're essentially selling a normal PC at this point). What you can't do commercially is sell OS X running on non-Apple hardware unless you're Apple themselves and you release it under a different licence.
If you post a URL that doesn't even support your claim, you'll get modded up? Your link simply tells us that Apple says their front company bought the worldwide rights, which we already know they claim.
It seems there are two options here:
* Proview China is lying in a last-ditch effort to save their company
* Apple and/or their front company didn't do their homework
Nothing in your link sheds any light on the issue.
I'm not apprised of the situation at all except what I've read on this page, but the way I read that is that the company was fully aware of the sale, but didn't find out until later that the buyer was Apple, perhaps because they used a differently named subsidiary to make the purchase.
I would imagine such tactics are common for well known corporations and persons. After all, if Tim's Computers wants to buy your domain name (or trademark, or 500 widgets, etc.) you ask for $20. If Apple, Google, Microsoft, Foxconn, etc. want to buy your domain name, you'll be a lot more tempted to ask for $20,000 instead.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I wonder how many Yuan it will take to "show" that...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Take the iPad out of China; sell it in all the surrounding countries. Anybody know what the sales number is for iPads in mainland China? Apple can take the Chinese strategy of just "wait them out." It's not like the iPad market is going to live or die on Chinese sales, and they're already worried about meeting demand for iPads every time a new one pops up.
Meanwhile, get an agent to pursue purchase of the assets of the nearly defunct ProView.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
FoxxConn is already producing their own fPad for sale in China. It is half the price of an iPad and looks, and runs exactly like an iPad.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It seems there are two options here:
* Proview China is lying in a last-ditch effort to save their company
* Apple and/or their front company didn't do their homework
I'm a betting man. I'd apply probabilities of 90% and 10% respectively if I was looking to bet on those options. We already know Proview is fucked. Their factories are closed down and their shares have been suspended from the stock exchange. They admit they're looking for an out of court settlement, whilst trying to push that by shopping around jurisdictions looking for injuctions. Which is the standard tactic of an IP troll.
The other thing is the whole Hackintosh community was also against Psystar - they had to change their licensing of all the tools required from some freeware to explicitly "no commercial use allowed".
Yes, Psystar lied multiple times about the source of the bootloader modifications. They did not just rip off Apple, they ripped off open source software as well, without attribution. Their stories about almost everything they did kept changing throughout the court case--lose on one issue, change the story about what they're doing to something else and try again was their mode of operation throughout the whole case.
American companies and American taxpayers fund the development of technology, and then China turns around and steals the designs and makes a profit off of it. We're basically subsidizing Chinese industry, with U.S. corporations and taxpayers paying money to help China put U.S. workers out of business. The Chinese government turns a blind eye to all of this, or perhaps more likely, the government is actively encouraging this industrial espionage, just like the Soviets had a strategy of stealing Western technology during the Cold War.
Yes, Apple should obey the letter of the law, and perhaps they didn't do that in this case. But it seems remarkably hypocritical for a Chinese company to be dragging a Western company to court for intellectual property violations. Somehow when the theft goes the other way, nobody seems to notice.
Hypocrisy, maybe. But, at least 60% of our "intellectual property" is unethical bullshit.
Slide to unlock, anyone?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If I buy a car, stereo, computer, whatever from some dude, it's mine, right?
But, what happens when the cops knock on my door, with a search warrant, and search my home for that stuff I bought? They say it's stolen. And, I'm arrested, booked, and charged with "receiving stolen property".
I think Apple is in a parallel position here. They can expect to be slapped around a little for trying to bully the rightful owner of this "intellectual property".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Typically when you buy worldwide rights, it applies to the entire world, no?
If Apple really did get what they thouight they'd bought, it was still only the rights to the trademark in the 10 countries that the Taiwanese subsidiary claimed was theirs to sell. So not worldwide rights then.
That's all well and good, except for the fact that they paid for the trade mark.
They say they paid for the trademark. The court decides whether they legally bought or licensed the trademark.
I think Apple will win this one because they'll be able to show that they really did pay for the trademark in China.
Apple bought iPad from Proview: "Apple says it bought Proview's worldwide rights to the trademark in 10 different countries several years ago, including rights to the iPad name from a Taiwan subsidiary of Proview International. Back then, the Proview Taiwan unit had sold the rights to IP Application Development Ltd, a London-based company that was set up by Apple, for 35,000 pounds, Proview's executives and lawyers said."
:-/
If your wife sells the family car, and you realize later the car's been sold, i think that's between you and your wife, not the buyer's fault.
But since Proview China is suing and blocking sales, can't Apple sue Proview Taiwan for selling something it didn't own? Like if I sued the buyer to get the family car back, the buyer would just sue my wife for selling something she didn't own, so really I'm suing myself.....
this is confusing
But this is funny: Yang said the company had been developing a tablet product called the iPad back in 2000. "We spent a lot of resources on it. It's the same concept as the iPad today, except that back then, there were practically no LCD screens," Yang said.
LOL an iPad with no LCD? How the hell would that work?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Actually just the opposite. Taiwan doesn't consider itself part of China, while China considers Taiwan another province, completely owned and controlled by China.
Saying that contracts in Taiwan don't apply in mainland China would be like saying that Taiwan is NOT a part of China, but an independent state, or some sort of autonomous zone, which is NOT what China has historically claimed, nor is the official position of the government.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Am I the only one who finds the existence of this lawsuit a bit hypocritical? China isn't exactly known for its strict policy towards intellectual property.
The real driver here seems to be mainland Chinese banks had loans to Proview, and Proview wanted to declare bankruptcy. If that is the end of it, Chinese banks (aka Chinese government) will lose money. If mainland Chinese courts are told to find for Proview and award billions of dollars, the loans are paid off or mitigated with Apple money.
Welcome to business in a country without rule of law.
But if I bought the TV at Best Buy, paid the man in the blue shirt at the register and got a receipt for it, you can't realistically charge me with receiving stolen property if it turns out the cashier was manipulating the register on his day off and just pocketed the money.
Apple isn't claiming they bought it off the back of a truck from some guy, they claim to have done due dilligence and they did actually buy it from a company that should have had legal rights to transfer the rights in several jurisdictions. Proview Taiwan and Proview PRC aren't two companies with the same name, there's a real corporate link between the two.
Either Proview Taiwan fraudulently misrepresented the fact they had been empowered to sell on behalf of their parent company, or once Proview realized who really bought the trademark they figured they let it go too cheap and could extort a bit more money for it.
This
Ahhh, history repeating itself all over the globe? Not that long ago the US were doing exactly that with European "intellectual property", blatantly ignoring patents and copyrights whenever it suited them. Rather hypocritical indeed.
Well, actually Taiwan officially claims to *be* China (specifically they claim to be the 'Republic of China' [ROC] and that they have territorial rights over all of China (and Mongolia and parts of India and parts of Burma and parts of ...)) and that the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] government (the People's Republic of China [PRC]) is illegitimate. Meanwhile the PRC claims Taiwan is a rebel province under their jurisdiction. So they both claim Taiwan is part of China, just they claim it's part of *different* Chinas.
(There has been growing support for officially declaring Taiwan an independent country and no longer holding onto the claim to be the real government of China. But a lot of people in Taiwan oppose this because such a declaration would seriously anger the CCP and could lead to war.)