Apple Accused of 'iPad' Trademark Infringement in China

oops and OUCH apple! there go our aapl dividends?

ps- i hope that apple better checks out all relevant apple like names and other copyrighted related stuff in china....... that market is VERY important for the company

Apple, just called CHiPad in China... Don't give your money away to those morons. Use it to provide free webcams to iPad users instead, and keep us happy!

The company said they wanted $800 million to license the name iPad. PLEASE!!! Just buy the stupid company, lay off all the lawyers, and use the name as you wish.

They could also buy 51% of the shares, and vote as the majority stockholder to give the license to themselves.

Huh?!

Oh, this is rich: the Chinese--you know, the land of unlimited bootlegging, counterfeits and knock-offs--are complaining that someone is infringing THEIR intellectual property rights? Of all the dashed hypocrisy...

The joy of dealing with multiple countries. You can't even be mad at the Chinese company, it's not like the bought it trying to block Apple. They have had it since 2000. Wow.

Sure but what has this company been doing with this trademark since then. A product, a service, anything. Is it Ipad, IPAD, maybe even I-Pad, or is it actually iPad. Uh-oh, look at Apple making millions of a successful product. Let's sue then for trademark infringement of no product.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Very sleek. Show an iPad with pictures of Asians for a story about China.

dpkworldwide said:

Oh, this is rich: the Chinese--you know, the land of unlimited bootlegging, counterfeits and knock-offs--are complaining that someone is infringing THEIR intellectual property rights? Of all the dashed hypocrisy...

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Not "the Chinese." One Chinese company, which apparently does have the rights to the name.

Not that I don't see the irony, but there's nothing hypocritical in this company defending a copyright they hold.

hirshnoc said:

Very sleek. Show an iPad with pictures of Asians for a story about China.

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It must be an image from the Chinese Apple Store, since the text is Chinese characters.

OllyW said:

Apple used to make a product called a PowerBook and you can bet they've got trademarks for that name throughout the world.
It's been over 4 years since they last sold a product with that name so do you think it's ok for someone else to use it without Apple's permission?

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No kidding!! Can you imagine the sh*tstorm Apple would put up if someone tried using the "PowerBook" name anytime in the next 500 yrs?????

Buy the company and then use it to test white iPhone.

PS. I trademarked the use of letter to form words. I want 800,000,000,000,000 US dollars for every letter used to create a word.

$800 mill?

Yeah, right. Here you go. Actually, seeing as we have a few billion to toss around...

What a joke

What happens if?........

nastebu said:

Not "the Chinese." One Chinese company, which apparently does have the rights to the name.

Not that I don't see the irony, but there's nothing hypocritical in this company defending a copyright they hold.

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Sure, I'm all for copyright protection, but demanding nearly a billion dollars because you had an idea for a name? Talk about the ultimate in GREED! Apple could change the name with 1 letter or number and leave these guys holding their iPad name in China. Give these guys a fair chance to create THEIR billion dollar iPad or maybe they could sell their name to another company for a mere 800 mil. Good luck!

nastebu said:

Not "the Chinese." One Chinese company, which apparently does have the rights to the name.

Not that I don't see the irony, but there's nothing hypocritical in this company defending a copyright they hold.

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The hypocrisy is that this company is using Chinese law to defend its copyright, whereby Chinese law pretty much craps on foreign copyrights by virtually sanctioning the mass production and exportation of counterfeit goods.

Wow, dudes. There are some pretty wild views of China in the forum today.

I'm no expert, but in my experience, Mainstream Chinese business is not all that different from business in the US or anywhere else in the world.

In any big country you'll have varying pockets of citizen infringement, organized infringement, patent trolls, trademark campers and so on. Mixed in you'll have legit vendors, legit patent holders etc.

Capitalism is HUGE in the Chinese cities I've visited, they've got more entrepreneurs, indie business guys, and folks selling things on the street than just about anywhere else in the world. American small business folks could pick up a thing or two.

In China's zeal to embrace capitalism, there were some bumps now and then that the media likes to blow out of proportion or over generalized to all of China.

Like I said, it's really not that different.

Every country is like a cup of fine coffee. The blend might be a bit different, but in the end, it's still coffee.

franswa za said:

oops and OUCH apple! there go our aapl dividends?

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What dividends would those be?

[RANT]China never gave a damn about cheap knock offs rip offs and other crap like that. And yet they open huge stores in my country, just because people buy their cheap crap.
By letting them sell that kind of crap honest (or not so honest people) are losing their jobs. Nowadays your either rich and spend a lot of money on (what you hope that is) a quality product, or you don't buy a thing.
Even in big name stores they sell cheap chinese crap, like their ipod copycat players.
But the fault isn't on the chinese people itself. It's the government.
Even our government that doesn't ban crap from being imported, hell they even help them to come here (they don't pay taxes for like 5 years).

Now just because uncle Steve has a big pile of cash means that any company wants a big stack of cash just because of an trademark?[/RANT]

We are all human, we all get corrupted way to easily.
And they are people just like us. I know a few chinese students and they are very nice people.

I think I will trademark iCrap. Maybe some day it will make me rich

Don Kosak said:

Wow, dudes. There are some pretty wild views of China in the forum today.

I'm no expert, but in my experience, Mainstream Chinese business is not all that different from business in the US or anywhere else in the world.

In any big country you'll have varying pockets of citizen infringement, organized infringement, patent trolls, trademark campers and so on. Mixed in you'll have legit vendors, legit patent holders etc.

Capitalism is HUGE in the Chinese cities I've visited, they've got more entrepreneurs, indie business guys, and folks selling things on the street than just about anywhere else in the world. American small business folks could pick up a thing or two.

In China's zeal to embrace capitalism, there were some bumps now and then that the media likes to blow out of proportion or over generalized to all of China.

Like I said, it's really not that different.

Every country is like a cup of fine coffee. The blend might be a bit different, but in the end, it's still coffee.

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Although this article is a blog, it does highlight several key issues:

1) Counterfeit goods manufacture is rampant in China
2) This industry is hurting the manufacturers and therefore the employes and retail outlets of genuine merchandise, not to mention costing governments in lost tax revenue
3) Further, this illicit industry is a considerable problem in terms of human rights violations (e.g. child labour)

If every country is like a coffee, then I would consider China to be an acrid and unhealthy cup-o-joe. Especially when you start considering how poorly they treat their environment. Sure, it is often foreign companies driving the production of pollution and many of the other ills experienced through the development of their economy, but it is up to a country as a sovereign nation to ensure the long term survival of its citizens and consequently itself, but China seems to be burning the candle at both ends as quickly as it can.

just call it the iPwad and save 800 million

The one from Apple, Inc. is not merely iPad (capitalization emphasized), but iPad.

It's imprinted on every device.

Rocketman

hirshnoc said:

Very sleek. Show an iPad with pictures of Asians for a story about China.

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Asians who are probably Japanese rather than Chinese, as it happens.

Oooops.

dpkworldwide said:

Oh, this is rich: the Chinese--you know, the land of unlimited bootlegging, counterfeits and knock-offs--are complaining that someone is infringing THEIR intellectual property rights? Of all the dashed hypocrisy...

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I LOL'd at that one. Well said, although some of us still turn a blind eye when we buy that $4 charging cable on ebay and don't see the Apple logo on it.

spillproof said:

Buy the company and then use it to test white iPhone.

PS. I trademarked the use of letter to form words. I want 800,000,000,000,000 US dollars for every letter used to create a word.

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LOL... I love your idea.. They just want a short cut to get rich

OllyW said:

Apple used to make a product called a PowerBook and you can bet they've got trademarks for that name throughout the world.

It's been over 4 years since they last sold a product with that name so do you think it's ok for someone else to use it without Apple's permission?

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Nice point! Isn't it?