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Chinese Customs Tells Proview That Ban of iPad Exports Would be Difficult

pmjoe said:
Gentile reminder of what a corrupt, communist country China is.
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Well, you could also argue that a subsection of the company sold the name rights without the approval of the mother company. How does that matter? Legally, it was their own company selling the name. Just because you think you can milk the same cow twice a day, they persued it. If their substity didn't have the "right" to sell the name, then this is an internal matter - not a win-win for proview. In the end, the sale would have been fraud and that would fall back on Proview because they defrauded Apple selling the iPad name without being able to do it the way they did.

But the reality does not deal with legal matters. The reality is that China will do what is best for China - and that does not include using another company to finacne a dying company to the costs of repelling investors and shift of production outside of China.
 
Perhaps they could rename it easily enough. There are what, hundreds of languages and dialects across China? Pick one, maybe one that's even dead and gone already, with a nice sounding word for Pad, and put an english "i" on it.

Or just don't officially call it anything. Remove the word "iPad" from the packaging and marketing materials for an even more minimalist approach. Feature it on the front page of the website linking to the order page, but leave the name off. Anyone buying in-store doesn't need to see the name anyway. The only word they'll see is "Apple".
 
farleysmaster said:
Why? They felt they had a legitimate claim, why shouldn't they defend it? And why should they be punished any more than court costs (or loss of Apple's revenue) if they lose?
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Do you think, as thorough as we know they are, Steve & Company somehow missed this when they were signing the papers from Proview several years ago? With their army of lawyers? Or do you think it's more about extortion from a corrupt company and a corrupt government? I think it's the latter.
 
farleysmaster said:
Why shouldn't they? Why is a games console called an xbox when it's not an x-shaped box?
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I think we can all see why they called it an XBox.

Original_Xbox.jpg
 
JGowan said:
I think we can all see why they called it an XBox.

Image
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That is not why but fine, it was a bad example. It doesn't change the fact that there's nothing that says a products name have to have anything to do with the products look or functionality
 
Proview's main corporate head is pretty close to being delisted (29 June 2012 final) from the HK exchange. When Kodak was recently delisted it went to our pink sheets.

The main reason for the delisting is the reduction of capital and compliance by the firm. It is not even able to show 12 months of working capital (cash flow) or the minimal capital (net assets) to be listed on the exchange. The exchange has low standards.

I do not know why they have not or cannot do a secondary stock offering to eliminate debt. I do know their display business has been increasingly unprofitable and thus unable to cover costs. Their CEO quit.

One wonders if they would simply surrender to Apple by giving them the trademark in exchange for assistance in liquidating the firm and restarting a new entity that is solvent and viable to at least preserve some of the jobs and operations. Right now the company is close to the HK version of BK.

Rocketman
 
FloatingBones said:
What is it that Proview actually sells?

Do they actually have an "ipad" product? Have they ever had one? Or have they just been squatting on a name?
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Yes, they've been selling i-Pad monitors since 2001. A MacRumors member posted a photo of the product.

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Abazigal said:
So what's a screen company doing trademarking the "ipad" name again? :confused:
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Who knows, but they've been using it since 2000... long before Apple did.

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MacRocker said:
But, that is how americans get to buy everything so cheap, off the blood, pain, and death of the chinese population.
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OK - things are vastly different than what you think in China. Yes there are labour violations, but there are in the US as well. Americans hire illegal Mexicans all the time to do their dirty jobs... sometimes in slave labour conditions. So...
 
Isn't it funny that they are making a fuss about it 2 years after the original release?

Now that the product has taken off they want a piece of apple's pie ( money)
 
My .02 cents.

Ideally, it shouldn't matter if Proview is doing this just to get money or not, if they have rights to the name, they have rights to the name and Apple should pay up or change the name.

No, I don't think it's right that Apple gets to bully its way through cause it has more money and I do think it's a good chance though the Chinese government is going to rule in who ever is better for the country vs. who is right in the argument.

All you people laughing cause Apple has too much money or that the Chinese government is ruling in Apple's favor cause they know who benefits China more better hope you don't create something that Apple takes and you get no recourse because Apple has enough money to shut you up.

And no, I'm not usually one yelling at how evil Apple is. I don't boycott them or hope they want to fail (I really don't want them to fail, I like my Mac and I like my iPhone). I just think that it should be ruled what is fair.

That being said, I don't really know enough to say whose side I am on in this case (I am not a lawyer and honestly this stuff confuses me some. So I tend to hope that Apple isn't just bullying their way through stuff. But in this case I could see it being them doing just that. I mean in the end they are there to make money, not to be moral, and they most likely will do what is in their best interests).

(and I do agree it is really ironic for China to be carrying about some one copying some one else).
 
OllyW said:
They don't have to still be making the product as long as they own the trademark. Try releasing a new product named PowerBook and see how well that goes.
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Well, a quick trademark on uspto.gov shows that so long as your product isn't computer hardware you'd be just fine calling it a 'Powerbook'. (All the other registrations of that trademark are dead.

Additionally, I think you'd be even be able to release computer hardware with that name in a couple more years. There's some rules about how long you can go without actively using a given trademark in commerce without abandoning the mark, and IIRC the PowerBook is going to hit that time limit fairly soon. In fact, I think the only reason it's still active now is because Apple is still using the trademark when selling accessories (such as video adapter dongles and the like) for their old PowerBook systems. I can't imagine they'll keep doing that terribly much longer at this point though, since it's been about 6 years since they last sold one.

But who knows, maybe they'll come out with a new 'PowerBook' product to keep the trademark alive.

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tigress666 said:
My .02 cents.

Ideally, it shouldn't matter if Proview is doing this just to get money or not, if they have rights to the name, they have rights to the name and Apple should pay up or change the name.

No, I don't think it's right that Apple gets to bully its way through cause it has more money and I do think it's a good chance though the Chinese government is going to rule in who ever is better for the country vs. who is right in the argument.
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I agree completely. If Proview China *does* actually have the rights to the name, then Apple will very likely end up paying the associated penalties (and probably buying the rights). On the other hand, there will probably be a legal action against the division from which they bought the 'global' iPad trademark rights for misrepresentation, in order to recoup any such losses.

Here's the thing. I think Proview China is probably in the right here, but I don't think Apple is being a 'bully' either.

The best case scenario for the whole situation is that the other division honestly believed they had all the rights they purported to sell to Apple. In that case, Apple probably gets a refund of the portion of the original purchase price associated with the rights which couldn't actually be transferred.

The worst case scenario is that said division knew it didn't, and misrepresented to Apple that they did in order to get a better price on the sale of the rights they actually *did* have. In that case, Apple probably ends up being awarded damages in the corresponding suit equal to the costs involved in defending this suit, that one, and additional penalties on top of being reimbursed for whatever additional costs it took to secure those rights in China.
 
azentropy said:
Silly dispute. It isn't like anyone is going to confuse the two products line any more than people get confused with the Ford Fusion automobile and the Gillette Fusion razor.
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I would say a display and tablet are much closer than a car and razor. Clearly the same industry.

Question is just about whether Apple's purchase rights are valid, and then whether export should be an issue for sales in other countries. Strange so few in the thread are talking about these 2 points.
 
If Proview like the "i" so much, they should think of a more appropriate name. iPlum perhaps? That has a nice ring to it.
 
tbrinkma said:
The best case scenario for the whole situation is that the other division honestly believed they had all the rights they purported to sell to Apple. In that case, Apple probably gets a refund of the portion of the original purchase price associated with the rights which couldn't actually be transferred.

The worst case scenario is that said division knew it didn't, and misrepresented to Apple that they did in order to get a better price on the sale of the rights they actually *did* have. In that case, Apple probably ends up being awarded damages in the corresponding suit equal to the costs involved in defending this suit, that one, and additional penalties on top of being reimbursed for whatever additional costs it took to secure those rights in China.
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I really don't think this matters. If they knew it or not, they are not protected if they didn't know. This is not criminal law, it is civil law between two companies. If you do wrong, no matter if you knew or not, and you damage another party, you pay. Since the damage is as high as the gain of the parent company, it is bogeous to even persue the whole infringement lawsuit on Proview. If I remember correctly, China regards Taiwan as part of China - so the transfer happened in China as well, right? Oh well, it doesn't help China to argue this way in this case, so it happened outside China then... :rolleyes:
 
The insinuation that in civil law, one side is right, and the other is disingenuous is silly. Both sides clearly feel there is a case to answer so they try to find a way to settle it...

I've been amused, however, how internet armchair diplomats are even more ridiculous than the typical armchair lawyers.

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JGowan said:
I think we can all see why they called it an XBox.

Image
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Sure... that one's been out 10 years. But this one deserves the title:
box_front_tn.jpg
 
Amazing Iceman said:
That's the case for almost everywhere.
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So citizens everywhere are just as indifferent to actual justice being delivered in their name as the Americans and the Chinese? I figured at least one country, somewhere, had the decency to take enormous sums of money out of the justice equation. Silly me.
 
I'm still trying to figure out in this whole thing how a parent company doesn't own the rights to a product name in a particular country? That doesn't make any sense.

TEG
 
daxomni said:
So citizens everywhere are just as indifferent to actual justice being delivered in their name as the Americans and the Chinese? I figured at least one country, somewhere, had the decency to take enormous sums of money out of the justice equation. Silly me.
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Indifferent? Who says I'm indifferent?

All I have said is that there's corruption everywhere, not just in China. Some places more obvious than others, but that doesn't seem it's not happening in the U.S., and in very large quantities.

Not everything that happens in the world or in this country appears on the news. In this case, just because the name Apple seems to be involved, it gets front row attention and 100% media coverage.
There's no proof that Apple is paying money under the table to Chinese Customs for this to happen. So far, it seems like an internal affair between different offices of the Chinese Government. It's up to them to decide what to do. Whether this is against their best interests or not, that's up to them to decide.

That doesn't mean I'm going to be indifferent nor that I'm going to panic like others here seem to be starting to panic.
 
azentropy said:
Silly dispute. It isn't like anyone is going to confuse the two products line any more than people get confused with the Ford Fusion automobile and the Gillette Fusion razor.
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People aren't going to confuse the giant Apple corporation with tiny European coffee shops, or NYC recycling campaigns, or little childcare centers either... but that doesn't stop Apple's lawyers from attacking anything or anybody with even a vaguely similar looking apple in their logo.

What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.

Either Apple was misled by one company, or they missed some details. Either way, it has to be worked out fairly.
 
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