Apple has settled its iPad trademark suit with Proview, agreeing to a $60m pay-out in order to use the iPad name for its tablet in China. “The iPad dispute resolution is ended,” the Guangdong High People’s Court confirmed in a statement. “Apple Inc. has transferred $60m to the account of the Guangdong High Court as requested in the mediation letter.” Proview had argued that Apple’s apparent purchase of the iPad trademark back in 2009 was not legally valid.
Apple is believed to have offered $16m to Chinese firm Proview to finally secure use of the iPad trademark in China, but the ailing company is reportedly holding out for a huge $400m settlement. Although Apple confirmed it had made an offer to Proview earlier this week, it declined to specify what sums were discussed; according to sources familiar with the negotiations speaking to Chinese site Sina, however, Proview has been forced to demand far more than Apple is willing to offer, as its creditors ratchet up the pressure.
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Apple and Proview have been battling in Chinese courts for a long time over trademark claims for the iPad name in China. In the US, Proview claimed that Apple deceived it into the selling rights of the iPad name by saying the trademark was an abbreviation for the company name. Proview sold the rights to Apple for the iPad name for $55,000 back in 2009.
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Apple's chances of winning the iPad trademark battle in China may be slim, according to the remarks of senior official Fu Shuangjian, a deputy director of China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC). In one of the first public comments made by a government official about the Apple-Proview trademark controversy, Fu sided with Proview saying that the iPad trademark currently belongs to the Shenzhen company.
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Google has had its e-mail service available in Germany since 2005. However, the company hasn't been able to use the Gmail name since shortly after the service launched. The reason is that a German entrepreneur named Daniel Giersch held the trademark on G-mail as a short for Giersch mail. Apparently, the man hosted a physical and electronic mail service in Germany around 2000 under that name.
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Apple must balance a fine line between generic use of the iPad name for tablets and continued dominance of the slate segment, experts have warned, as the company faces the possibility of the trademark being deemed generic. The name of the best-selling tablet is already associated by many consumers as a catch-all term for tablets in general, the AP writes, despite the best efforts of Android slate manufacturers and others. However, while Apple's value hasn't been hurt by the sales success of the three generations of iPad, it could also potentially lose control of the name itself should courts decide it has too deeply entered the public lexicon.
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Facebook's recent privacy policy changes may have made it tougher for employers to demand users' passwords and could indeed spark a federal investigation, but the site also took the opportunity to slip in a spurious trademark claim. Among the tweaks was the addition of "Book" to the copyrights and trademarks section, ZDNet spotted, suggesting that by using Facebook you concede that they hold the rights to the term.
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Mojang, the company behind wildly popular game Minecraft, were being sued by Bethesda Softworks over the title of Mojang’s next game, titled “Scrolls”. Bethesda argued that the title was too similar to “The Elder Scrolls”, and a legal tumble followed. Soon after, Notch, the head of Mojang, declared that Bethesda and Mojang should settle their differences with a Quake 3 tournament, the winner taking the “Scrolls” name.
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Apple has renewed its offensive against iPad trademark foe Proview, claiming the company "is misleading Chinese courts and customers" and accusing it of trying to shake down Apple so that it can pay off its neglected debts. The Cupertino company pointed to its own track record of IP registration as evidence that it respects trademarks, the Washington Post reports, though Proview's lawyers maintain that Apple is looking to "mislead the courts, the public and media."
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BlackBerry smartphone maker RIM is having an undeniably hard time on the market today. The company has seen the popularity of its smartphones with the average consumer and governmental agencies that for so long relied on the BlackBerry wane significantly. Many companies, government organizations, and consumers are replacing their BlackBerry devices with the iPhone or Android smartphones. However, RIM did get a bit of good news recently.
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Apple has warned Chinese courts that ruling against it in the ongoing Proview iPad trademark case would "harm consumer interests" and "cause confusion", despite the fact that its Hong Kong foe has supposedly been using the name since 2001. "Consumers in China have come to associate this trademark with Apple's tablet computer" a lawyer from Apple's legal team told the Higher People’s Court of Guangdong this week, Bloomberg reports, arguing that Proview should no longer be allowed to use the brand in the country.
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Apple faces renewed criticism over the Proview iPad trademark case, amid accusations that the shell company Apple set up deliberately mislead over its intended use of the trademark in order to secure the sale. Proview, which is currently suing Apple in the US, claims Apple's "special purpose company" IPADL (IP Application Development Ltd) assured the Taiwanese firm that it sought the trademark as "it is an abbreviation for the company name" the BBC reports.
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