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Apple Threatens to Sue Proview for Defamation as Chinese Court Asks Distributors to Pull iPads
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Orly, is that why they keep loosing???
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U may find proview we around way before valve.
Winning and losing isn't important at this stage. It's all about who can sustain the offensive.
If Apple lose this, they should stop selling iPads in China in the short term, and sell them there under a different name in the longer term.
Ok - it'll cost a lot of money to do, but not $2 billion.
That would pull the rug from under Proview, embarrass the Chinese government and send a clear message to other companies that blackmailing Apple doesn't pay off.
Imagine - an IPud in China only. Everyone would laugh
I imagine that Proview/China would quickly back down and it would be business as usual quite soon.
Ok - it'll cost a lot of money to do, but not $2 billion.
That would pull the rug from under Proview, embarrass the Chinese government and send a clear message to other companies that blackmailing Apple doesn't pay off.
Imagine - an IPud in China only. Everyone would laugh
I imagine that Proview/China would quickly back down and it would be business as usual quite soon.
I think Apple is probably ready to just change the name. They could call it the Apple Pad in China, it would be clear to everyone why it has that name and it would still sell fine. Heck, the market is big enough that they could put some chinese characters on it and maybe get some positive PR. Though having chinese characters on it might lower its value in the eyes of the chinese consumer because they might worry that they are getting a worse version of the device than the U.S. version, even if we are just talking about the etching on the back.
Well, we have Proview 1 (which supposedly sold the trademark to Apple) and Proview 2 (which supposedly owns the trademark). Importantly, not only did Proview 1 claim to be Proview 2, but Apple claims to have email evidence that Proview 2 knew all about it and agreed to it.
Now there are several possibilities: The most likely one is that Proview was quite happy to sell a trademark for an attempt at an iMac clone ten years ago to some British company for £55,000. (The name of the company was something like Intellectual Property Advanced Design Limited, or IPADL, so it seemed reasonably that they would want the IPAD trademark). Later they found it was Apple behind it, so they changed their story.
The second most likely is that they figured out that it was Apple and planned this extortion from the start. This is less likely, because in that case they could have just asked for a lot more money.
Sounds like you went to a crappy school Mr. I-am-afraid-of-foreigners.
BS Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech. Every engineering school has a larger percentage of non-americans and non-caucasians than outside.
Kind of makes sense when you realize that the USA has been outsourcing manufacturing to these countries for 50+ years. If you live in China/Pakistan/Malaysia/etc and want a job with mobility, then one good way is to get an engineering degree and experience dealing with Americans so that you will be useful to the companies and plants back there (especially since most Americans only speak English).
At Tech, neither your accent nor your home address had any bearing on your smarts or work ethic. I have met brilliant scientists and beer-swigging burnouts, both domestic and foreign.
The reason why other countries are kicking our butts in engineering is because the commensurate pay is better over there. The best and the brightest have a *reason* to become engineers in India and China.
The best and the brightest in the USA want to become doctors or investment bankers because those jobs pay a hell of a lot more and you can retire from those jobs in your early 50's (or get some cushy position where you do nothing for better pay than a mid-level engineering grunt).
Whether or not Proview knew that IPADL was associated with Apple, its criminal intent was clear, given that the contract was signed by the subsidiary that did not own the Chinese trademark, even though the correspondence was with the subsidiary that did own the trademark (and falsely claimed that its sister company owned it). What difference does it make whether Proview intended to defraud IPADL or defraud Apple? In any case, I fail to see the point of attempting to defraud IPADL unless it was obvious that IPADL was working for Apple.
Given that Apple had not announced the iPad at the time this sale was completed, I am not surprised that Apple used another company to make this purchase. In any case, this is a universal business practice, as I stated earlier, to avoid overpaying for purchases ("it's Apple that wants to buy this, so I'll ask for 100 times as much money for it"), and in Apple's case, to maintain the shroud of secrecy surrounding unannounced products. I know Apple could have been more up front by making the purchase itself, but that would have alerted the world to its iPad plans, and aside from that, it is neither illegal nor uncommon to make purchases in this manner.
Sounds like legal games as a method of extortion of more "hassle" money.
Reading the HK court decision http://bit.ly/wHqvDD, the facts are fairly plain. The agreement as posted eariler in this thread reflects the facts described in the court "decision". Note that the court didn't really have to decide much, as Apple's legal case was accepted unchallenged and undefended by Proview excepting for a legally invalid statement.
The action in China is in a different legal jurisidiction from the agreement and the HK court ruling. So somehow a higher court in China will have to rule on this and Proview is hoping to get *any* amount of money from Apple to make them go away.
At some point, Proview will run out of legal funds and it will all blow over, since the Proview case appears flimsy.
Reading the HK court decision http://bit.ly/wHqvDD, the facts are fairly plain. The agreement as posted eariler in this thread reflects the facts described in the court "decision". Note that the court didn't really have to decide much, as Apple's legal case was accepted unchallenged and undefended by Proview excepting for a legally invalid statement.
The action in China is in a different legal jurisidiction from the agreement and the HK court ruling. So somehow a higher court in China will have to rule on this and Proview is hoping to get *any* amount of money from Apple to make them go away.
At some point, Proview will run out of legal funds and it will all blow over, since the Proview case appears flimsy.
Maybe they'll call it the iSlate like the very early rumors suggested (the ones before the iPad was actually released)