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Apple To Pay $60 Million Over iPad Trademark Dispute
tekgoblin writes "Today a Chinese court has stated Apple, Inc. has agreed to pay a Chinese company $60 Million dollars to settle their infamous iPad name dispute. In 2006 Apple purchased the Taiwanese rights to the name 'iPad' from the company Proview Electronics. In China however, the trademarked name was still owned by Proview Technologies, a Shenzhen based subsidiary of Proview Electronics. Since 2011, Proview Technologies has battled Apple in the Xicheng district court and in 2012 the Santa Clara Superior Court. Both cases are still ongoing."
Chinese leadership wealth makes Romney look "middle class" in comparison.
http://allthingsd.com/20120216/take-a-look-at-some-of-apples-evidence-in-proview-ipad-dispute/
From everything I've read, Proview actually signed the agreement then backed out when they found out it was Apple because they figured they could milk them for a lot more money. I guess, it being Chinese law, they were right.
E pluribus unum
According to Proview's creditors. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary.
No there isn't - there are only Apple's claims on one side, versus Proview's claims and this settlement on the other.
You apparently missed the case in Hong Kong that preceded this one. Proview first attempted to sue Apple there back in 2010, and the judge came down extremely hard on Proview, ruling that they had engaged in exploitative behavior (I believe I also saw the word "conspiracy" being used in some other reports at the time). The person at the head of both Proview branches is the same person, so he had full knowledge of the business dealings, and the Hong Kong judge, who we have every reason to believe was privy to the details of the contract, ruled that Proview had indeed sold Apple the worldwide rights to the trademark, both for the Taiwanese branch and the PRC subsidiary. Proview only sued Apple in the PRC after that previous case failed and they declared bankruptcy.
What you should infer from this settlement is that Apple didn't want to take chances with their multi-billion USD business in a court system that may play favorites with a local company.
I know a hot topic gets multiple selections, so do Slashdot editors pick the one with the single worst article? This news items is covered in several reputable places, yet, they selected a submission that looks like it was written by an 8th grader. They use AP's Tweet to make it look like an official AP story/headline. There's brilliantly nonsensical lines like "Proview is continuing their lawsuit in Santa Clara for $1.5 billion dollars while allging fraud and unfair competition. The case was soon after thrown out by a judge."
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Except... that's not what happened.
They bought what they thought were the world-wide rights to the trademark. What Apple did that you really should be bitching about is they created a dummy corp and lied to Proview about what the trademark was for. "Oh well we're just a piddly lil company that needs that acronymn, it's hardly worth anything but if you'd like to part with it..."
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)