After a few months of negotiations, Apple and Proview have finally settled their trademark dispute regarding the iPad name.
After a few months of negotiations, Apple and Proview have finally settled their trademark dispute regarding the iPad name.
Proview, a company based in China, alleged that it was the sole and true owner of the iPad trademark and that Apple’s tablet was subsequently infringing upon their intellectual property. To remedy their alleged injury, Proview filed suit against Apple in late 2010 and demanded that Apple pay as much as $1.6 billion for the trademark. Concurrently, Proview was also angling to ban the sale of iPads in China and even the export of iPads out of China.
Apple, meanwhile, had long asserted that it was the true owner of the iPad trademark, noting that it had acquired the iPad trademark from Proview subsidiary Shenzen Proview Technology back in 2009.
Proview however claimed that the agreement Apple signed into didn’t apply to mainland China and that Apple was therefore an infringer.
The dispute centered on whether Apple acquired the iPad name in China when it bought rights in various countries from a Proview affiliate in Taiwan for 35,000 British pounds ($55,000).
The December court ruling said Proview, which registered the iPad trademark in China in 2001, was not bound by that sale, even though it was part of the same company.
Not too long ago, Apple spokesperson Carolyn Wu explained that Proview’s parent company structured the initial trademark agreement in such a way as to enable it to be called into question later on. And adding another layer to the story, Proview had long been struggling to stave off bankruptcy. The company was and remains $400 million in debt and creditors were reportedly starting to get impatient.
“Because they still owe a lot of people a lot of money, they are now unfairly trying to get more from Apple for a trademark we already paid for,” Wu explained a few months ago.
But all’s well that ends well, and after months of negotiations that saw both sides unwilling to budge, Apple has agreed to pay Proview $60 million for the iPad trademark.
“The iPad dispute resolution is ended,” the Guangdong High People’s Court explained in a statement and relayed by the Associated Press.. “Apple Inc. has transferred $60 million to the account of the Guangdong High Court as requested in the mediation letter.”
And so Apple can finally put this legal squabble behind it. And while attempts to attain an injunction against the iPad in China never went anywhere, China isn’t a country Apple wants to get into any legal trouble in given how important the area is to Apple’s ongoing growth.
Proview hoped for more money but felt pressure to settle because it needs to pay debts, said a lawyer for the company, Xie Xianghui. He said the company had hoped for as much as $400 million and might still be declared bankrupt in a separate legal proceeding despite the infusion of settlement money.
“This is a result that is acceptable to both sides,” Xie said.
Apple had previously offered $16 million to settle the case.
