Apple’s iPad sales in China may quickly come to a screeching halt. Proview Technology and Apple have been in and out of court for some time on the matter of who owns the ‘iPad’ trademark. A Chinese court ruled recently that Apple is not entitled to use the iPad trademark. This means that Apple will either change the name of it’s tablet PC or pay a huge sum of money to Proview Technology.
Between 2002 and 2004, Proview trademarked IPAD in European Union, China, Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. In 2006 Proview sold the trademark to a 3rd-party which turned out to be a company working under Apple. Soon after the deal was struck, the two companies began to argue whether China was included in the deal.
This was a result of Apple suing Proview for the IPAD trademark in China. Now that Proview has won, the company has stated that they will begin to take legal action against iPad resellers as well as consider suing Apple for trademark infringement in return.
Read the whole story at China Briefing