Apple Lost to Chinese Company over iPad Trademark: New Lawsuit

01 Feb 2012 | News | Ali Gorelova on Google+

Last December, one of courts in China rejected a claim to the iPad name. And now Apple has decided to file an appeal over that rejection.

Previously, the company leveled a lawsuit against one of the People’s Republic of China’s local companies (Proview Technology) trying to take control of iPad trademark in East Asia.

According to news reports, the Cupertino (California, USA) company (that we all know as Apple) lost its original case in December, 2011 and officially appealed with the Chinese court on January 5, 2012. The court’s full name is the Higher People’s Court of Guangdong Province.

The company’s initial suit stated several things. First of all, Apple made a statement that it legally bought the iPad trademark back in 2010 from IP Applications, a company based in the UK. In its turn, IP Applications purchased the trademark rights from a Taiwanese Proview subsidiary.

The Shenzhen Municipal Court shot this lawsuit down.

Why? According to the ruling announcement, the purchase was annulled since the Shenzhen-based company never attended the negotiations and the purchase was made through a subsidiary.

The most confusing rumor about this case is that various reports connect Apple to IP Applications. No actual facts. Just something to think about…

As for Apple, it bought the iPad trademark from Fujitsu before the first iPad was produced in 2010. Fujitsu has been using the moniker for handheld gadgets based on Windows CE since 2003.

Five years ago, Apple bought the remaining international rights for the iPad name from Proview’s Taiwan subsidiary. Those rights included the iPad trademark in China.

The representative of the Shenzhen Company, Xie Xianghui, said that Apple was asking for the iPad trademark along with over $600,000 compensation fee as part of the current appeal. Besides, Proview decided to file 2 lawsuits trying to ban iPad sales. These cases are pending now.

If Apple loses again and doesn’t come up with a new brand name for the iPad tablet computers, it will have to pay $1.6 billion to retain its trademark in China.