Apple's iPad trademark dispute in China

[Saladinos]

Still seeing this all over the news (e.g. Engadget today brought it up again), so I thought you'd like to see some pertinent info:

High Court of Hong Kong: Apple vs PROVIEW

the Written Agreement and the Country Assignments executed on 23 December 2009 expressly stated that Proview Electronics was the proprietor of the Subject Trademarks including the China Trademarks and that Proview Electronics warranted that it was the unencumbered sole owner of the Subject Trademarks including the China Trademarks. The Country Assignment pertaining to the China Trademarks (“the China Country Assignment”) also recited that Proview Electronics was the proprietor of the China Trademarks.

Apple paid £35,000 (about $55,000) for the iPad trademark from Proview electronics. The purchase agreement said Proview electronics owned the trademarks (including the Chinese one), and that it was able to sell them.

Apple and IP Application further complained that while acknowledging that a mistake had been made in the China Country Assignment, the Contracting Defendants refused to rectify the mistake and suggested that Apple should pay US$10 million to purchase the China Trademarks.

Apple later found a mistake in the contract (The trademark was assigned to the parent Proview, not Proview electronics). Proview's $10M figure for the Chinese trademark is about a thousand times higher than Apple paid for the worldwide rights.

Not only that, but when you look at the court document in more detail, it's clear that Proview can't defend their case. Their arguments were "clearly inadmissible". The judge's verdict:

Here, the conduct of all the defendants demonstrate that they have combined together with the common intention of injuring Apple and IP Application by acting in breach of the Agreement. Proview Holdings, Proview Electronics and Proview Shenzhen, all clearly under Yang’s control, have refused to take any steps to ensure compliance with the Agreement so that the China Trademarks are properly assigned or transferred to IP Application. Instead, they attempted to exploit the situation as a business opportunity for the Proview Group by seeking an amount of US$10,000,000 from Apple.

...

Accordingly, I am satisfied that there is clearly a serious question to be tried for the claim of conspiracy.

These guys are such blatent and obvious trolls, there's no way Apple is going to lose this fight. Given that Yang was declared bankrupt and is representing himself (although he failed to show), it's obvious these guys are trying to put media pressure on Apple to settle quickly and move the press on.