By now you’ve probably heard about the ongoing legal battle in China over the iPad name. If not, here’s a quick rundown: it seems that Proview, a Chinese company specializing in CRT and LCD monitors, owned the trademark for the name “iPad.” While Apple claimed to have bought the worldwide rights to the name, Proview denied this and, after negotiations failed, sued to block imports and exports of the iPad in China.
A lower court ruled that the iPad should be pulled from Chinese stores, but that ruling was reversed just a few days later. Proview, however, apparently got tired of waiting for the case to work its way through the Chinese court system. In February they filed a suit in U.S. District Court in California. In this suit, Proview claimed that they did not realize they were selling the rights to the trademark to a rival computer company, but to an IP developer.
Now, though, it seems that Proview has hit a brick wall in its U.S. case. According to Reuters, the presiding judge in the U.S. suit dismissed the complaint on the grounds that Apple and Proview had agreed to work out their differences in Hong Kong.
Proview accuses Apple of acquiring the trademark rights deceptively, and says that Apple’s agreement was with a single division of the company, rather than Proview as a whole. Apple, meanwhile, argues that Proview is simply trying to squeeze more money out of a trademark that it has already sold.
