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.'"

Comments

Deja Vu

[Dexter Herbivore]

FTA:

"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?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good, except for the fact that they paid for the trade mark.

Re:Move?

[El Torico]

Foxconn would laugh, continue to make the iCrap, and sell it under their own (or Proview's) brand. Outsourcing to China by the US has created a new economic superpower/monster that doesn't need the US any more.

Re:Good

[msobkow]

And the company that OWNS the trademark denies that the company that SOLD it had the right to do so.

Re:Good

[sribe]

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.

Re:Good

[erroneus]

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.

Re:Good

[flyingsquid]

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 New York Times recently did an article about how companies won't let their employees bring their personal laptops and cell phones to China, because they're worried that the Chinese will hack into them and steal their technology and designs. A few days ago there was a case where a Chinese programmer at the Fed stole a piece of software that they'd spent ten million dollars trying to develop. A couple months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported a case of a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer paying for control software stolen from an American firm. And are there even any estimates on how many pirated copies of Windows are in mainland China?

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.