Judge Tosses Proview's U.S. Suit Against Apple over iPad Trademark

MacRumors · May 8, 2012

Among several lawsuits filed by Chinese company Proview alleging that it legally owns the "iPad" trademark in China despite a deal December 2009 between Proview's Taiwanese arm and a dummy corporation set up by Apple for the purposes of acquiring the trademark, one lawsuit has been filed in the United States. In that suit, filed in California in late February, Proview alleged that Apple had engaged in deception in its efforts to acquire the trademark.

The Wall Street Journal now reports that the judge handling the case has thrown it out of court, citing an apparent agreement between Apple and Proview to adjudicate their differences in Hong Kong courts, where Apple won a decision last year.

After Proview took its legal case to the U.S., Apple argued for the case to be dismissed on the grounds that the parties had agreed to settle any legal disagreements in Hong Kong.

Judge Pierce upheld that view, writing that Proview failed to provide evidence that the selection of Hong Kong was "unreasonable or unfair," according to a copy of the order.

In response to the decision throwing out the U.S. case, Proview's lawyers claimed that the decision was not based on the merits of the case and that the company will appeal the decision.

The U.S. developments come as Apple and Proview continue their litigation in China, where the two companies are engaging in court-suggested settlement talks that have reportedly seen Apple for the first time making a settlement offer. But the two parties apparently remain far apart in their expectations for a settlement, and it is unclear whether the talks will yield any agreement.

Article Link: Judge Tosses Proview's U.S. Suit Against Apple over iPad Trademark

milani · May 8, 2012

Sounds about right.

Gubbz · May 8, 2012

I don't see the issue, ProView obviously sold the name for what they felt was a fair price, otherwise why did they sell it? Dummy company or not, they willingly sold it. The price shouldn't quadruple (and that is being extremely conservative lol), just because it's Apple... If you queue up and buy a burger, you expect to pay the same as the guy in front of you, you wouldn't expect to be asked to see a payslip so they could calculate out how much you have to pay... It just sounds like sour grapes, if they had known who it was, they'd have upped the price...

komodrone · May 8, 2012

We all pay 99 cents for a double cheeseburger, whether you're a homeless guy or a billionaire.

fabian9 · May 8, 2012

Gubbz said:
I don't see the issue, ProView obviously sold the name for what they felt was a fair price, otherwise why did they sell it? Dummy company or not, they willingly sold it. The price shouldn't quadruple (and that is being extremely conservative lol), just because it's Apple... If you queue up and buy a burger, you expect to pay the same as the guy in front of you, you wouldn't expect to be asked to see a payslip so they could calculate out how much you have to pay... It just sounds like sour grapes, if they had known who it was, they'd have upped the price...

That's exactly right! It's also not very difficult to work out who might have an interest in the name iPad, considering at the time there was an iMac, iPod, iPhone, etc. on the market!

Proview missed a trick here and they're trying to dig themselves out of a hole.

ingra888 · May 9, 2012

China is china, more than half the stuff they produce are blatant copies with slight differences in words but you can see what they
replicated.
The government in china turns a. Blind eye to it.
But when the shoes on the wrong foot, they can't take no for an answer.
Problem with Chinese businesses is contracts and documents are not worth the paper they are written on.

bretm · May 9, 2012

komodrone said:
We all pay 99 cents for a double cheeseburger, whether you're a homeless guy or a billionaire.

The McDouble only has one slice of cheese now. But yeah.

Rocketman · May 9, 2012

CA Court said:
After Proview took its legal case to the U.S., Apple argued for the case to be dismissed on the grounds that the parties had agreed to settle any legal disagreements in Hong Kong.

Judge Pierce upheld that view, writing that Proview failed to provide evidence that the selection of Hong Kong was "unreasonable or unfair," according to a copy of the order.

article reference to Proview comments said:
In response to the decision throwing out the U.S. case, Proview's lawyers claimed that the decision was not based on the merits of the case and that the company will appeal the decision.

The court ruled on JURISDICTION first so it became MOOT to rule on the MERITS. Proviews comments are PR not LEGAL, which is indicitive of their strategy in this case. To attempt to try the case in public. Unfortunately for them there is no website called ProviewRumors.hk to be their fanboi and dissect every detail of the proceedings and bias it toward them.

And thank goodness because the cacophony of criticism over the ruling of misrepresentation against them in HK would be, shall we say, just a bit embarrassing.

Rocketman

gnasher729 · May 9, 2012

MacRumors said:
In that suit, filed in California in late February, Proview alleged that Apple had engaged in deception in its efforts to acquire the trademark.

There was no deception at all. They were approached by a company which said "we want to give you £35,000 in exchange for the trademarks for the name IPAD that you hold". All the relevant details were absolutely truthful.

As an example what "deception" would be:

Buyer: "We want to give you £35,000 for the IPAD trademark".
Proview: "That's a nice offer, but we are still selling some monitors under the name iPad".
Buyer: "That's fine, we don't mind, you can continue using that name for monitors as long as you like".
Proview: "Sold!"

Three months later:

Buyer sues Proview for selling monitors under the name iPad.

That would be deception, because the buyer told them something during negotiations that turned out to be false.

mTofu · May 9, 2012

From previous articles found on this site, they have mentioned that Taiwan didn't have the rights to sell the name (even though some corporate head office guys were involved).

If I bought a car and "gave" it to my daughter and then she decided to sell it without my signature/say so, then it wasn't a legit sale.

I don't know what is involved in selling rights to a name, but if the right people didn't sign the dotted line then they might have a case.

kurosov · May 9, 2012

mTofu said:
From previous articles found on this site, they have mentioned that Taiwan didn't have the rights to sell the name (even though some corporate head office guys were involved).

If I bought a car and "gave" it to my daughter and then she decided to sell it without my signature/say so, then it wasn't a legit sale.

I don't know what is involved in selling rights to a name, but if the right people didn't sign the dotted line then they might have a case.

You have an interesting concept of "give". A transfer of ownership.

Now, if you bought a car for your daughter to USE then it's her car as much as say her bedroom. Your property you are free to take back.

tbrinkma · May 9, 2012

mTofu said:
From previous articles found on this site, they have mentioned that Taiwan didn't have the rights to sell the name (even though some corporate head office guys were involved).

If I bought a car and "gave" it to my daughter and then she decided to sell it without my signature/say so, then it wasn't a legit sale.

I don't know what is involved in selling rights to a name, but if the right people didn't sign the dotted line then they might have a case.

True, but in this case, the 'daughter' company has the same few folk in charge, so the people signing the documents stating that the 'daughter' company has the right to sell the 'car' are the *same* people who are now alleging that the 'daughter' company never owned the 'car'.

In other words, the more accurate analogy would be you buy a car, dress up in drag, sell the car to me, and then tell the court that I can't possibly own the car because you, the owner, are a man and I claim to have been sold the car by someone wearing a dress. Strangely, when I provide the sale documents, your signature is plainly visible, right next to mine.

ristlin · May 9, 2012

Proview is diving headfirst with the hope of getting a nice settlement. The court pushing for a out of court settlement reinforces that claim. He's not Steve, but Tim doesn't seem like the appeasing type, so I'm sure he'll deny a settlement for as long as he's CEO.

gnasher729 · May 9, 2012

mTofu said:
From previous articles found on this site, they have mentioned that Taiwan didn't have the rights to sell the name (even though some corporate head office guys were involved).

If I bought a car and "gave" it to my daughter and then she decided to sell it without my signature/say so, then it wasn't a legit sale.

I don't know what is involved in selling rights to a name, but if the right people didn't sign the dotted line then they might have a case.

On the other hand, if I offered to buy your car, you said that it was your daughter's, and I handed the money to your daughter while you were watching, and then you called the police for car theft when I drove away, I don't think you would get away with it. And that is exactly what Proview is trying to do.

angrynstupid · May 9, 2012

They're Communists

What do you expect?

whooleytoo · May 9, 2012

gnasher729 said:
On the other hand, if I offered to buy your car, you said that it was your daughter's, and I handed the money to your daughter while you were watching, and then you called the police for car theft when I drove away, I don't think you would get away with it. And that is exactly what Proview is trying to do.

It looks very much like Proview are either duplicitous (allowed the buyer to be misled about its ownership of the trademark) or incompetent (actually didn't know precisely who had ownership of the trademark and/or didn't realise someone was trying to sell it).

Nevertheless, should the trademark transfer still stand? This isn't the purchase of a second-hand car where a person's presence, or a nod or a handshake is enough. Surely a contract of sale only is binding if the 'seller' is the legal owner?

Anyway, looks like this is going Apple's way.. in Hong Kong at least.

8ate8 · May 9, 2012

gnasher729 said:
On the other hand, if I offered to buy your car, you said that it was your daughter's, and I handed the money to your daughter while you were watching, and then you called the police for car theft when I drove away, I don't think you would get away with it. And that is exactly what Proview is trying to do.

This is actually a better analogy to describe the situation.

Rajani Isa · May 9, 2012

mTofu said:
I don't know what is involved in selling rights to a name, but if the right people didn't sign the dotted line then they might have a case.

Basically Proview is saying the ones who signed it over where only wearing their Taiwanese hats, not their Chinese hats - the people who had the authority to sell the trademark for both "arms" of Proview were the same people.

This is like going up to someone who owns two different restaurant franchises (say one a pizza joint, the other a burger joint) and getting permission to set up a sign advertising your services in their restaurants, then being told "oh, it was just the pizza joints you could post in" - despite them never specifying anything more than "my restaurants".

Rodimus Prime · May 9, 2012

While Apple screwed up in getting the iPad trademark in China having Proview saying Apple did underhanded stuff is rich compared to the underhanded stuff Proview to separated out the iPad trademark part for China.

I am glad the judge tossed out this crap case.

gnasher729 · May 9, 2012

whooleytoo said:
It looks very much like Proview are either duplicitous (allowed the buyer to be misled about its ownership of the trademark) or incompetent (actually didn't know precisely who had ownership of the trademark and/or didn't realise someone was trying to sell it).

Nevertheless, should the trademark transfer still stand? This isn't the purchase of a second-hand car where a person's presence, or a nod or a handshake is enough. Surely a contract of sale only is binding if the 'seller' is the legal owner?

I was told that in the UK, it is perfectly legal to sign a contract with a false name - and the contract is then binding for the person who signed. Doing it with the intent of defrauding someone (by claiming that you are not bound by the contract) would be fraud.

In this case, it is actually the same people once pretending they own the rights, and then pretending they don't. If a person (CEO of company A) was in a position to legally sell the trademarks through company A, and actually signed a contract to sell them as the CEO of company B, then I am quite sure that company A is bound by this contract.

I can't say how exactly this works in China. In Germany, a company will be held responsible for the actions of its employees, as long as the employee does things that match what he is employed for. (For example, someone whose job it is to demolish the house next to yours enjoys doing this so much that he demolishes yours as well - you can sue the company and win). If employees of company A sell rights that they have the right to sell, but pretending to be acting for company B, then company A is responsible for the actions of its employees.

Or lets say an employee whose job it is to sell used equipment of his company sells you goods that were actually stolen, and pockets the money himself. If you could reasonably believe that he was acting for his company, then the company is responsible. They can of course sue the employee, but that's not your problem.

charlituna · May 9, 2012

fabian9 said:
That's exactly right! It's also not very difficult to work out who might have an interest in the name iPad, considering at the time there was an iMac, iPod, iPhone, etc. on the market!
.

not to mention that a quick google would have revealed that every freaking Apple rumor site was going on and on about how IPAD was probably a front for Apple.

charlituna · May 9, 2012

mTofu said:
From previous articles found on this site, they have mentioned that Taiwan didn't have the rights to sell the name (even though some corporate head office guys were involved).

But supposedly Apple has documented communications that say that China was included in the deal and they were never told that the people they were dealing with didn't have the rights to include it. And were not told this until after it was revealed that IPAD, UK was in fact working for Apple and Apple's lawyers were asking about why the Chinese trademark registry didn't have their info updated that Apple now owns the trademark. it was at that point that suddenly Proview started saying that China wasn't included in 'global rights' etc.

MacinDoc · May 9, 2012

Rajani Isa said:
Basically Proview is saying the ones who signed it over where only wearing their Taiwanese hats, not their Chinese hats - the people who had the authority to sell the trademark for both "arms" of Proview were the same people.

This is like going up to someone who owns two different restaurant franchises (say one a pizza joint, the other a burger joint) and getting permission to set up a sign advertising your services in their restaurants, then being told "oh, it was just the pizza joints you could post in" - despite them never specifying anything more than "my restaurants".

It's worse than that. According to the emails published, IPAD initially approached the Chinese subsidiary of the company, which advised IPAD in writing that the Taiwanese subsidiary owned the "global" rights, and that the officials of the Chinese subsidiary wanted to meet IPAD at the Taiwanese subsidiary's office because that was where the rights were held. This was not an error of omission, it was a deliberate lie to defraud IPAD of the naming rights it was attempting to purchase. Then the Chinese subsidiary revealed that the Taiwanese subsidiary did not actually own the naming rights, even though their previous email correspondence with IPAD stated that that was where the rights were held.

Judge Tosses Proview's U.S. Suit Against Apple over iPad Trademark

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