Apple and Proview Face Off in Shanghai Court Over iPad Trademark

[faroZ06]

Do international lawsuits even work?

 

[doberman211]

If it's only been sold up until 2009 why is it even an issue? And the thing looks like a piece of ****. Do they really expect they can take on Apple? Lol fools.

 

[Saladinos]

This is the truth, and frankly it's the problem with IP laws. A lack of common sense.

Not at all; it is an important consideration when deciding on how to proceed. That is, if the judge were minded to grant an injunction (which they shouldn't be; the facts of this case are pretty clear), the court might want to suspend enforcement pending Apple's appeal.

The key consideration there is what would happen if the injunction was enforced straight away (would anybody suffer? Clearly, Apple would suffer enormously), and how that compares to what would happen if enforcement was delayed until the appeal was over (would anybody suffer? Proview don't have any products or customers, so clearly they wouldn't suffer).

Because Proview has no products and no customers, there cannot possibly be any damage to them by delaying any injunction until after an appeal. In fact, the whole value of the iPad trademark exists because Apple use that name. If they didn't, it'd be next to worthless (like when Apple bought it the first time for £35k).

It is an important point to make. The courts aren't there to give snap, extreme decisions that punish people (at least not in this case). They don't want to cause massive damage to either party before they've had a chance to appeal.

 

[RobertMartens]

Love the copy on this ad. Typical of what I see in Taiwan all the time. lmao

Bad copy aimed at non-english speaking markets make you laugh your ass off?

 

[RobertMartens]

I could assume their backup would be ApplePAD. Like the iTV debacle.

Who said the iTV AppleTV issue was a 'debacle'?

iTV was the project name which they chose not to use. Actually you are probably alluding to ITV being a tv station. So they could never really take ownership of it.

Considering the name AppleTV will be great for any forthcoming TV from Apple I think it turned out to be a great choice.

I think that perhaps the iPhone could have been called 'Apple Phone' since they only make one version, but iPhone seems to work very well. iPhone had been used by CISCO but the press had called the iPhone by that name for years before it was released so Apple was really obliged use that name. It took a few bucks to shut CISCO up but that's business.

And ApplePad is not a bad name either.

Actually the iXxx name series is so closely connected to Apple that it is just about the same to say Apple Phone or iPhone.

 

[tbrinkma]

errr.... no. Did you not follw the law suit about it? The Taiwaneese Proview substity sold it to Apple without Proview holding's "consent" is what they argue. Nevertheless, a Proview company sold it to Apple. If Proview doesn't know what is going on internally, it might be their own problem.

It gets worse than that though. Apparently, the guy in charge of the Proview subsidiary which warranted that they held and could sell the Chinese trademark is the *same* guy who is in charge of all three Proview companies.

Person A runs Company B, and it's subsidiaries C & D. A, in the guise of C sells Company E some trademarks. Then, A finds out that D is actually a holding company buying rights for Company F. At that point, A, in the guise of D, claims that the rights to one of the trademarks *couldn't* have been sold, because it belonged to D, not C.

The Hong Kong court essentially said that it looks like A was acting in bad faith either when he warranted that the trademark belonged to C, or when he later claimed that it wasn't.

 

[808?]

Shanghai court sides with Apple in iPad trademark dispute, sales to continue

Apple can continue to sell the iPad in Shanghai after a local court sided with the company in a trademark dispute over ownership of the "iPad" name.

Apple's victory over Proview, which for years sold a different product with the name "I-PAD," was confirmed by a source with direct knowledge of the ruling to Reuters on Thursday. The Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court made the decision quickly after a hearing was held on Wednesday.

At that hearing, Apple argued that a ban on iPad sales would be a negative for the nation of China. A lawyer representing Apple said that Proview has no products or customers, while Apple has "huge sales in China," and therefore prohibiting sales of the iPad would "hurt China's national interest."

Proview has contended that it owns the rights to the iPad name, and seeks to halt sales of Apple's hot-selling tablet in China. Though Thursday's ruling was a major setback for Proview, the company had previously had some minor successes in having a small number of iPad units pulled from shelves in a handful of cities.

Apple bought the right to use the iPad name from one of Proview's Taiwanese affiliates, but officials at Proview believe that was an unauthorized transaction, and the company has sought as much as $2 billion from Apple to use the iPad name. Apple, however, believes that Proview is not honoring up the original deal that was struck between the two companies.

Thursday's ruling was particularly significant for Apple because the company has three major flagship stores in Shanghai. A loss there would have barred sales of the iPad from some of its most heavily trafficked retail locations in the world.

Though the Shanghai victory is significant for Apple, it still faces challenges from Proview elsewhere. The company has even gone as far as to ask the Chinese government to block exportation of the iPad, which would effectively bring global sales of the device to a halt.

http://www.appleinsider.com/print/12/02/23/shanghai_court_sides_with_apple_in_ipad_trademark_dispute_sales_to_continue.html

 

[RonnyK]

Under American trademark law, the iPAD mark would probably fall under the category of a descriptive mark, and would thus only be protected if it had acquired secondary meaning beyond the descriptive term Internet Personal Access Device. Given that the name describes exactly what the device is, and has no additional non-descriptive meaning, it would not be a valid trademark in the United States. It could also be argued that iPad is distinctive from iPAD, especially since iPAD is actually intended as an abbreviation of the device's full name.

Unfortunately, we are dealing with Chinese law and Chinese courts in this case, so this argument is of academic interest only.

Your underlying premise is correct concerning descriptive marks, but your analysis is incorrect.

In determining whether a claimed mark is descriptive you need to look at the mark, itself, not what it stands for. While "iPAD" may be an abbreviated form for a descriptive term, this, alone, doesn't make the "iPAD" mark descriptive. Indeed, it is common practice for IP attorneys to counsel their clients to use abbreviations or acronyms in order to obtain trademarks where the related word(s) would not be "trademarkable" due to descriptiveness. Both UPS and IBM are examples of trademarked acronyms for what would otherwise be descriptive terms.

 

[iTard]

Go proview! kick apple's ass!!

 

[28monkeys]

What a shame.