During the day yesterday I wrote an article in which we told you that a Taiwanese company managed to convince a Chinese court not to accept a lawsuit filed by Apple regarding the iPad trademark. The Taiwanese company Proview registered iPad as a trademark more than a decade ago, but Apple claims that it also has the name registered in other countries and wants to obtain the registration in China. Considering that a court has already decided that Proview has registered the iPad brand in China, the company decided to sue Apple, asking to ban the sale of the tablet in two cities. Proview had initially requested 1.5 billion dollars from Apple as compensation for the sale of the iPad in China, but I assume that Apple refused to give money since it reached a lawsuit for the prohibition of sales.
"Apple is such a Goliath and has a good image, so people wouldn't imagine that Apple could possibly infringe on our intellectual property rights," said Xiao Caiyuan, a lawyer for Proview at Guangdong Guanghe law firm. "People always think it's small companies infringing upon large companies' IPR."
"We hope that this decision will make our negotiations with Apple a bit easier," said Li Su, a representative of Proview. The Shenzhen Futian District Court is due to start hearing one case on December 30, and the Huizhou Intermediate People's Court has scheduled a hearing in the other for January 7. We are starting with these two cities, and if we are successful in getting iPad sales stopped, we will consider going after Apple resellers elsewhere in China.
For the time being, the lawyers of the Proview company have introduced requests to block the sale of iPad tablets in two cities in China, and if their actions are successful, then they could request a ban on the sale of the iPad tablet throughout China. It is interesting that Apple bought in 2006 from the company Proview the right to use the iPad brand globally and now the company claims that in China Apple would not have the right to do this. The Chinese market represents approximately 30% of the total sales recorded by Apple in the last 3 months, and a ban on the sale of the iPad tablet there would seriously affect the profit.
