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Chinese iPad Trademark Battle Hits California Court
judgecorp writes "The Chinese company Proview is taking its trademark case against Apple's iPad to the Californian Courts. The company acknowledges it sold the IPAD name to Apple, but denies Apple has rights in China, and has accused Apple of underhand tactics." Says the article: "Any kind of ban in China would obviously be a major headache for Apple, since that is where most of the iPads are manufactured. If Proview is successful, it would effectively stop worldwide distribution of the tablet, and delay the launch of the iPad 3."
Ten years ago, Proview was one of the top 5 contract manufacturers, beside companies like Wistron, Foxconn, BenQ, Lenovo, etc. Where some (like Wistron's Acer and Foxconn and Lenovo) managed to grow larger than their contractors (Dell, Apple, Gateway, IBM, etc.), Proview was stuck in the CRT assembly market and never re-emerged. The company made a billion for awhile re-manufacruring and refurbishing old monitors for resale in India, Africa, etc., but that business was labelled "ewaste" and the company went bankrupt in 2007 I think. Now it's an angry wife and wants some of Apple hubbie's moola.
Gently reply
Well... this is ironic. A company in China is suing one in the US for copyright infringement.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Translation: Look, we know we sold you the trademark and you legally have the right to use it and all but we're failing as a company, about to be de-listed from the stock exchange and _REALLY_ need the money so would you just shut the hell up and hand over some cash.
Yeah, a failing business certainly makes companies pull some stupid, desperate stunts...
Apple has a long-standing tactic of creating shells to do their brand and part buying, to make it difficult for the rumor mills and competitors to figure out what Apple is up to. And it sounds like they're complaining that they sold the iPad name to a company they didn't realize was buying for Apple.. (otherwise they'd have no doubt have tried to charge them more for it)
Too bad. I have no pity for people that like to scheme with "you have more money, so I'm going to charge you more!" getting beat at their own game. These people are only upset at themselves for not recognizing the value of what they were selling, and want someone to cover their loss as a result.
This is no different than a buyer trying to go after a seller for overcharging them for something after they realize they paid too much for it. Just the shoe's on the other foot.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You're not supposed to sue Apple! It's the other way around! Stop it or Job will be angry, up there in heavens with god to his right.
BusinessWeek, Jan. 10, 2011: China Could Game the U.S. in Intellectual Property: Now China may do with intellectual property what it did with capitalism: adapt our system and beat us at our own game.
They sold the rights to the trademark to Apple. There is no problem manufacturing the product in China, as long as it's not sold in mainland China under that name. Apple does have rights to use the trademark elsewhere. This is purely a money grab by Proview.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Of all nationalities, a CHINESE company is feeling bereft of its idea, and goes to court over it. It's funny to see the PRC govt. crack down on this as well, while systematically turning a blind eye to all other plagiariasm and IP theft that is the technological foundation of the nation.
...that it makes one suspect that it's a planned project to see how far and with what effects the american justice and patent system can be played, manipulated and used. it smells of intelligence gathering. seriously... the people's republic of china's government suddenly caring for trademarks, intellectual property etc.?
just a quick adaptation of artwork on the device and the box.
I don't care if the box reads 'Proview management pisses on their mothers graves®' in nice Chinese calligraphy. And that trademark isn't registered in China, at this time.
Rename the iPad to iTablet and call it a day
and apple will have a hard time selling itv in the uk. If they where to name there apple tv Itv.
I have no idea whether or not it constitutes fraud to hide behind a "shell" company (although common sense tells me it isn't fraud, I mean a small company could've bought the trademark and then Apple bought it from them what's the difference?).
But I do know that Disney, when he was buying up (seemingly) most of Florida for Walt Disney WORLD used exactly this tactic to acquire the (tens of thousands?) of square miles of land he needed. He didn't want to repeat the fundamental mistake of building a theme park but not the land around it thus allowing (other) developers to get rich. (I understand that finally that Japanese American family that owned a strawberry farm right next to Disneyland finally sold, probably for a HUGE amount).
I never heard of Disney getting sued let alone losing.
So this, to me, doesnt seem to be fraud, not unless they lied about something. (I understand that Proview claimed the purchasers said they wouldn't have a competing product; well not only is the iPad completely different from what Proview made, but Proview hasn't made it for years).
Steve Jobs personally was the only one who knew how to operate the reality distortion field. Now he's gone, it's thrashing about wildly causing all manner of worldwide chaos, such as this zombie Chinese company thinking it still owns the rights to the name it sold to someone because, err, that someone since sold it to Apple.
Is no more ethical than pretending you are poor.
The situation you describe is no different than the old story of getting flat tire at the only gas station in town when you ask the attendant how much it will be to fix the tire he says "how much do you have?".
The seller sets a price, when the buyer meets it a deal is done. Each tries to get the best deal from the other. If the seller would try to bring buyer desperation into the pricing policy, I don't see anything wrong with the buyer doing what they can to eliminate it as a factor.
Wouldn't you be upset if you stood in line at the store to buy the same bottle of pop as the person in front of you and the cashier said it would cost you more because you look like you have more money?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Not only that, but China also has a legal culture where companies use shell companies to make purchases. According to Reuters:
Not that this will prevent Proview from wanting to get more from the deal after-the-fact. In my opinion, the real kicker's gotta be that the name of the shell company Apple used.
blog
Sounds like its about time to look at moving all your manufacturing out from China and look elsewhere.
There are two issues at hand : did Apple get the iPad trademark in China and is the buying through a shell company valid.
It seem that Apple has no rights for the iPad brand in China (well, they got screwed over this one). If courts in china decide that Apple has no right to the iPad name in China, this could mean that production could be blocked in China... And producing the iPad somewhere else would mean (much) higher costs.
There is also another problem : when Apple bought the name, it made up a name for a company which was the same than the product name (iPad) but where saying it wasn't about electronic display devices (well, it was about software programming) so there were no trademark issue (else, IP Application Development could have been sued for Trademark infrigment by Proview). It's improbable that Proview would have sold the iPad trademark to some company planning to make display devices.
This is how the tax system works - you ask "how much for my share of Government?"
The MAN says, "How much you got?"
Seriously, this Chinese company must have a large holding of SCO Stock!
Apple has offered to change the name of the iPad to iFU.
So how is that outsourcing to China working out for you Apple? One company can grind your entire production to a halt.
I'm gonna trademark iShoe, iRock, iCar, iFruit, iBeam, iGlasses, iSpy, iPatent... because these are all totally new original words and it's not like I'm trying to trademark a generic term at all.
Whoops, please add iTrademark, iGeneric and iTerm to that list.
Oops! iList!
Damn - iOops.
uhoh. iDamn
will it never end?
iEnd
This space available.
Not that big of a deal
and apple will have a hard time selling itv in the uk. If they where to name there apple tv Itv.
So it's a good job that Apple haven't even confirmed that they are making a TV, let alone what it will be called.
Also, the newspaper claim that ITV had contacted Apple to warn them off has been disputed - although I believe it was briefly an issue some years ago when the Apple TV STB was first announced.
Disregarding all that, yes, iTV would be a spectacularly bad name to use in the UK - even legally - because its a household name that has been associated with the second largest TV channel since the 1950s even though the current company is fairly recent. They have already ventured into IPTV with their "ITV Player" service (there's an App for that). Also, if you read the Wikipedia article on ITV you'll see that the "ownership" of the name ITV is far from simple, and acquiring it would be a can of worms (quite probably involving the UK government).
Oh, and since ITV Studios sell shows worldwide, its a fair bet that the trademark is registered in other countries, too.
All that is rather a far cry from buying the trademark rights to the name of a specific, obscure (or possibly discontinued) product.
Plus, most people could eat a can of Alphabetti Spaghetti and puke a better name for a premium-priced television set.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Or rather, they don't consider that the subsidiary that sold the trademark to Apple's shell company had the authorisation to sell the Chinese rights, despite the parent being party to, and signing, the deal.
This is not the argument in the U.S. case, which appears to be based on whether Apple fraudulently obtained the trademark by using a fictitious company. I have no idea how the courts in California treat something like that - techcrunch.com says "If true, this is a fairly serious offense, and Apple’s ownership of the trademark could be overturned." source
Just name it JobPad.