Over the past few weeks, Apple has been entangled in a serious legal dispute with a Chinese company called Proview. Proview alleges that it owns the iPad trademark in China and is therefore seeking a complete ban on iPad sales in the country, and though far less likely, an export ban as well.
Over the past few weeks, Apple has been entangled in a serious legal dispute with a Chinese company called Proview. Proview alleges that it owns the iPad trademark in China and is therefore seeking a complete ban on iPad sales in the country, and though far less likely, an export ban as well.
What makes things sort of tricky is that Apple did, in fact, purchase the iPad trademark from Proview back in 2009 via a dummy corporation – which is a common practice amongst large companies who want to keep future product names secretive. In any event, the original deal involved Apple purchasing the trademark rights in 10 countries. Proview, however, claims that the deal did not include rights to the iPad trademark in mainland China.
And therein lies the root of the dispute.
Apple maintains it owns the iPad trademark and alleges that Proview is merely trying to extort money from Apple. It’s worth noting, that Proview is on the verge of bankruptcy and desperately needs to raise some capital.
And while the two companies are battling it out in the courts of China, things took an interesting turn recently as Proview last week filed a lawsuit against Apple in California alleging that the Cupertino-based company employed deception to acquire the iPad trademark from them.
Reuters notes:
Proview accuses Apple of creating a special purpose entity — IP Application Development Ltd, or IPAD — to buy the iPad name from it, concealing Apple’s role in the matter.
In its filing, Proview alleged lawyers for IPAD repeatedly said it would not be competing with the Chinese firm, and refused to say why they needed the trademark.
Those representations were made “with the intent to defraud and induce the plaintiffs to enter into the agreement,” Proview said in the filing dated February 17, requesting an unspecified amount of damages…
Notably, Proview currently has no products for sale in China so how they can allege that Apple is now competing with them is curious, to say the least.
Proview here clearly wants to induce a large settlement agreement but Apple isn’t taking the bait.
Last week, a judge in Shanghai rejected Proview’s motion seeking a preliminary injunction against iPad sales in the city.
