So if you owned a trademark and were approached by a company knowing it had a $568,000,000,000 cap, you would be willing to give it up for a lousy $55,000? I THINK NOT! No large company in their right mind would ever let a trademark owner know who they really were. This isn't 'clever, it's SOP.
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Apple Threatens to Sue Proview for Defamation as Chinese Court Asks Distributors to Pull iPads
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So if you owned a trademark and were approached by a company knowing it had a $568,000,000,000 cap, you would be willing to give it up for a lousy $55,000? I THINK NOT! No large company in their right mind would ever let a trademark owner know who they really were. This isn't 'clever, it's SOP.
I wonder if the Chinese courts are independent of the political and commercial interests that run the county primarily for their own benefit. I somehow doubt that they are independent of these forces. Handicapping this legal battle on the basis of control and influence, I'd say that Apple probably has little to worry about, in the end.
It's not exactly . . . kosher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient
"Because of historical discrimination against Chinese and Japanese, in some parts of the United States, the term is considered derogatory; for example, Washington state prohibits use of the word "Oriental" in legislation and government documentation, preferring the word "Asian" instead."
Political Correctness gone wild - the Occident and Orient are long standing geographical terms with no negative connotation UNTIL they get into our hyped "PC" world.
This coming from a multimillion dollar company that sued a small German cafe for their logo? Ironic
http://tinyurl.com/3dkdk3n
http://tinyurl.com/3dkdk3n
"Cheap labor" is actually "cheap management". The term is a revolting euphemism for exploitation of national origin.
Every word is considered derogatory eventually it seems and we are forced on to new ones. Strangely this doesn't seem to have any real effect on how racist people are.
Big consumer companies such as Apple have armies of paralegals sending boilerplate letters such as this. I've been on the receiving end myself (from another megacorp, not Apple). I doubt there would be any followup by Apple if the cafe ignored this-- the real Apple lawyers would quickly decide Apple doesn't have a case, and this isn't worth bothering with.
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Sorry, just where does it say Apple sued the cafe?
What does proview make anymore? Do we ever see their products in the states? Would a worldwide boycott of proview help anything?
I'd bet that FOXCONN was looking into it more than Apple.
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They made a ripoff of the original iMac, other than that - no idea.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/17/proview_ipad/
What never really seems to come up in all these patent, trade name, etc. disputes is who in the end pays for all the damages and monies that change hands.
It's us the consumer!
Perhaps we should get together and sue, e.g., Apple for stupidly buying somebody else's product that turned out to be fake, or another company that wrongfully sues Apple, and so on.
When Apple has to pay damages, it comes out of our pockets. But when they win a case, I have never seen them actually send me a check.
That is a general remark about the whole system and pertains to every company, not just to Apple.
It's us the consumer!
Perhaps we should get together and sue, e.g., Apple for stupidly buying somebody else's product that turned out to be fake, or another company that wrongfully sues Apple, and so on.
When Apple has to pay damages, it comes out of our pockets. But when they win a case, I have never seen them actually send me a check.
That is a general remark about the whole system and pertains to every company, not just to Apple.
More ironic is how it took several lawsuits over years for Apple to 'acquire' that logo in the first place from Apple Corps.
These lowlifes will stop at nothing. Courts, "private" businesses, and state-owned assets are all one and the same in the corrupt cesspool that is China. With Foxconn investing heavily in robotics and moving operations back to Taiwan, factories tooling up in Brasil, and cheap labor readily available in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, looks like the Chinese are trying to steal everything that's not nailed down while they still can.
1. This is limited to the US. There are no negative connotations in the UK at all.
2. This is limited to parts of the US; in most of the US it's not considered offensive.
3. "Asian" is not a very useful term, since it includes Israelis, Turks Arabs, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. IME the term is most often used by Indians referring to the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. Do you have a better term?
About 10% of the MIT undergraduate body is international, and 37% of graduate students. Of the international students, 51% are Asian. So maybe 5% of undergraduates and 18% of grad students are Asian international students, more or less.
If you actually were on the MIT campus, perhaps you eyeballed a lot of Americans of Asian descent and assumed they were foreigners. If so, some self-assessment may be in order.
In any case, traditionally most international students have subsequently settled in the US temporarily or permanently, contributing their expertise to the US economy. That's slowed a great deal since 9/11, primarily as a result of a major increase in immigration restrictions and red tape.
Yeah, either Asians or Orientals. I don't care at all. I was just answering that one guy's ponderings as to why someone might consider Oriental a bad word. I found the reason on Wikipedia. Done.
This same crap was said in the 90s. As a Mechanical Engineer and Computer Science recipient I noticed a lot of Asians in the first two years and a considerable drop in the senior year curriculum.
What I did see and watched transpire and subsequently see a few expulsions were Chinese students plagiarizing and cheating on exams.
My Thermal Systems TA caught on when we just had an exam and these students complained they got the same answer but their score was lower than the actual guy who solved the problems for them.
He pulled a 15 stage Thermal System from the book, put it on the board and asked the kid to show him how to solve the same criteria that was on the exam.
The kid kept yapping on about how he got the same score until the TA bluntly said, ``You all cheated. Solve this problem right now and I'll raise your score.''
Each one walked out.
We all laughed.
Come Senior year I had a Chinese kid on my team who couldn't speak a lick of English and his knowledge of Axial Flow Fans [applied Fluid Dynamics] was crap.
He did absolutely nothing on the projects and he was one of the one's who made it to the senior level undergrad status.
The top kids in Machine Design were myself and 6 other Americans. We all decided to form a team ensuring we wouldn't get any free loaders.
My favorite professor, a Pakistani also related stories of his friends back in Pakistan now going to MIT while he himself then the top Nuclear Engineer for Pakistan decided to get his own PhD in Nonlinear Dynamics [at Washington State University] told of the rampant cheating across the board, from all nations. Those same friends with MIT diplomas eventually never entered the Industry.
As our Professor:
He gave us 6 hours to finish our final. Open Book, Open Note. You either got it or you didn't. His class was awesome.
He's still a dear friend and he's the head Nuclear Engineer down in the Tri-Cities. People didn't waste their time cheating in his classes [Machine Design, Kinematics, Nonlinear Dynamics], because he taught it to you 3 ways and gave you lecture notes.
Long Story Short: The Chinese aren't kicking our butts. You just won't see cheap labor in Engineering in the US because we know our self-worth and most of the folk working in those Manufacturing Plants aren't ABET certified holders of a B.S. in Engineering. They are certified and trained to assemble and test advanced electronic system.
If politics were removed from the equation the Chinese would be coming to the bargaining table ready to strike a deal about fair trade hoping we don't entice our corporations to leave in droves.
None of this has a darn thing to do with the Legal case, including your own rant about the Orientals.
Apple has the finest Law Team in the Globe and this company will lose.
Interesting. Usually Chinese authorities sit back when Chinese companies infringe on copyright, massively steal intellectual property.
In regards to Apple, well now they get the other end of the stick. They are suing everybody between Pontius and Pilatus, and now they are suddenly sitting on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
It would be great if the article could clear up if Apple's deal with the Hong Kong company to secure the trademark "iPad" had been valid or not.
PS: I don't think they sued the German cafe Apfelkind. They protested when the cafe owner registered her trade mark. But there was a big wave in German media in the sense of David against Goliath. Apple would have gotten the evil Goliath part. On top: it's hard to mistake an Apfelstrudel or a cup of coffee for an iPad. And the Apple is a very everyday item. This is why you can't find any trace of a real lawsuit of Apple against Apfelkind.
In regards to Apple, well now they get the other end of the stick. They are suing everybody between Pontius and Pilatus, and now they are suddenly sitting on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
It would be great if the article could clear up if Apple's deal with the Hong Kong company to secure the trademark "iPad" had been valid or not.
PS: I don't think they sued the German cafe Apfelkind. They protested when the cafe owner registered her trade mark. But there was a big wave in German media in the sense of David against Goliath. Apple would have gotten the evil Goliath part. On top: it's hard to mistake an Apfelstrudel or a cup of coffee for an iPad. And the Apple is a very everyday item. This is why you can't find any trace of a real lawsuit of Apple against Apfelkind.
It appears that the Chinese subsidiary (Proview Technology), owner of the Chinese trademark, fraudulently stated in its correspondence that the trademark was owned by the Taiwanese subsidiary (Proview Electronics). Proview Technology arranged for Apple's representative at to meet with Proview Electronics in Taiwan to sign the agreement, and assured Apple's representative that there would be no problem with ownership of the trademark, because "your cheque is acceptable to Proview" and "we are an international company", implying that this would all be done under the auspices of the parent company (according to AllThingsD, the parent and both subsidiaries are all under the control of CEO Yang Rongshan). It is clear that all members of the Proview group were party to this attempt to defraud Apple's representative. The only problem is that Apple's lawyers believed Proview Technology's claims that Proview Electronics was the actual owner of the trademark. So Proview basically stole the trademark from itself and then sold it to Apple, subsequently claiming that Apple misappropriated the trademark because it was stolen.
But then I suppose Chinese courts would support a Chinese subsidiary in a disagreement like this, even if a written agreement was signed under a threat of execution.
But then I suppose Chinese courts would support a Chinese subsidiary in a disagreement like this, even if a written agreement was signed under a threat of execution.
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Well, as you obviously don't get the meaning of a Cease and Desist letter by Apple and Mrs Romer not responding to it, the case will land in court. Maybe we should try Fox News' take on it so you understand it.
Maybe we should give them more credit. They have been working their own problems out slowly but surely since the early 1980s. Not good enough for neo-imperialists, but good enough for themselves which is all that should matter.