Apple's Trademark contested

    Companies and business as we all know strive to preserve an image that society can associate to. Whether it is for a line of clothes, brand of perfumes, name of foods it is irrelevant. Business are willing to go a long way to defend their ideas whether they can be expressed in tangible form (e.g. Big Mac sauce) or in intangible ( some specific concept/framework/model). In order to distinguish between "entities" there must be a unique features pertaining to each one. To preserve this uniqueness there are some key legal concepts which allow for this to be attainable: copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrets. If such protections were not in place I believe that the competitive strive in today's economy that drives capitalism will be non-existent.

   Apple Inc. is  a leading company that designs and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. Perhaps most notably  known from devices such as the iPhone, iPod,iPhone and iPad.

    Recently another company based in China, Proview Technology (Shenzhen), which deals with  manufacturing of computer monitors and other media devices. The issue was regarding the iPad device trademark holdings "A Shanghai court ruled against a Chinese company on Thursday in a suit that sought to prevent Apple from selling its popular iPad mobile device in China."

On one side Apple Inc. argues that "...it bought Proview's worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago." On the other hand "Proview Shenzhen claims it still reserves the right to use the trademark on the Chinese mainland." [1]

Who is right and who is wrong? Is this a loop hole in the system?

The progress of the story is that there is no progress " March 22 (Bloomberg) -- Proview International Holdings Ltd.’s Shenzhen unit said talks to arrange settlement negotiations with Apple Inc. regarding the rights to the iPad name in China have stalled." [2]


[1]. http://english.cri.cn/6909/2012/02/23/3124s682895.htm

[2]. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apple-trademark-dispute-negotiations-are-stalled-proview-says/2012/03/22/gIQAd5IIUS_story.html