Apple is getting a nice dose of its own medicine these days in the form of lawsuits from folks like Motorola and, more recently, the Chinese Shenzhen Proview Technology company. The Chinese company claims that it holds the rights to the terms IPAD / iPad in China and is working to get the Apple iPad banned from sale all over China. Details after the jump!
The news comes from the Associated Press – an American news agency – in the form of a report in which they discuss the state of the lawsuit filed by Proview against Apple.
Proview’s “iPAD” is nothing like Apple’s iPad. While both are computing devices in the traditional sense, they look and work differently.
Apple’s iPad, as we all know, is a tablet computer which acts as a platform for movies, TV shows, music, games, apps and more. Proview’s “iPAD”, on the other hand, is an “Internet Personal Access Device” that is an all-in-one desktop computer which still comes with a CRT display (what year is it!?).
An affiliate of Proview’s in Taiwan sold the “iPAD” name to Apple, but Apple lost a case regarding the term’s use in China recently, and since then, Proview has been contacting governments throughout China to remove the Apple iPad from shelves. Now, a lower court in Guangdong has ruled that distributors must stop selling iPads in China.
From Associated Press:
Xie Xianghui, a lawyer for Shenzhen Proview Technology, said the Intermediate People’s Court in Huizhou, a city in southern China’s Guangdong province, had ruled on Friday that distributors should stop selling iPads in China.
According to the report, Proview wants the popular tablet computer to be banned from sale in China or wants Apple, Inc. to pay a hefty amount to the company because of the damage done to its brand.
Speaking about “brand”, Proview is actually a dying company in China. AP reports that Proview’s shares have been suspended from trading in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since mid-2010. The company is “deep in debt” and may be delisted from HKSE soon for not sharing information regarding assets and capitals with the public.
(image via Sina)
It’s unclear which company will turn out to be the winner in this case, as Apple has the world’s best lawyers and a proven track-record of successfully winning lawsuits whereas Proview’s case is pretty strong: an affiliate of Proview sold the “iPad” name in Hong Kong (which works outside the jurisdiction of China) to a company set up in Britain by Apple so that it the purchaser’s identity would remain hidden.
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