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Apple Proview Ipad

February 18, 2012 by · Comments Off on Apple Proview Ipad 

Apple Proview Ipad, A bankrupt Chinese company suing Apple over rights to the iPad name is threatening to take its fight to the U.S. court system.

Proview International Holdings Ltd. is suing the American technology giant in China, saying it used a “fake company” to buy local rights to the iPad name from Proview’s Taiwan subsidiary for just $55,000 in 2009. In several mainland Chinese cities, iPads have already been removed from store shelves after local court rulings.

Friday, a Proview representative threatened to take the battle to Apple’s home country.

“I think in the future we will sue Apple in the U.S,” said Li Su at a Beijing press conference. “We are looking to choose between three different U.S. law firms.”

Proview’s Taiwanese owner Yang Rong Shan blasted Apple.

“If we are not compensated properly, then Apple doesn’t use the iPad trademark in mainland China,” said Yang, who disputed a report saying his firm was seeking as much as $2 billion from Apple.

Yang said his company had spent $30 million creating and building its Internet Personal Access Device, and showed reporters a sales brochure.

“It is the strong leading trend and nobody can resist the charming of iPAD,” the brochure’s English version reads.

In an e-mailed statement, spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said Apple owns the trademarks purchasing them through a shell company called IP Application.

“We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago. Proview refuses to honour their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter,” Huguet wrote.

Apple sued Proview in Hong Kong in 2010 to force it to hand over the rights to the iPad name in mainland China, after the firm claimed the Chinese rights weren’t included in the purchase. Proview claimed that the rights were still owned by its subsidiary in Shenzen, China.

In a decision last June, the Hong Kong High Court ruled in Apple’s favour.

“Proview Holdings . . . 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 million from Apple,” the court ruled. The court also found that Proview, its Shenzen subsidiary and a company it used to transfer copyright, Yoke Technology, were all controlled by Yang.

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