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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
Agreed. Either the trademark was worth $50,000 to you or it wasn't. It should not matter who was buying it. Nor is there anything illegal about creating a shell company to do acquisitions like this.
They are trying to claim that they were told the name wouldn't be used in a similar market, but if that's the case they should have had that in writing in the contract.
This case is not going to go anywhere.
AFAIK, all big companies do this. Microsoft did it when they bought a domain name from my friend. Harvard did it when they bought real estate to expand their campus.