Apple cough up £38 million to protect iPad name in China
Apple have had to open their cheque book in order to protect the iPad tablet name in China, where murky trademark laws have seen numerous companies claiming the right to use the name. The Cupertino company have had to pay Chinese company Proview $60m (£38m) in order to stop them from using the name to sell their machines.
Proview registered the iPad name back in 2000, used as the name for their own computer, which ironically looks very similar to the original iMac.
Apple believed that they had retained worldwide rights to the iPad name in 2009 after paying off Proview’s Taiwanese arm with a £35,000 sum.
However, the Chinese arm claimed that the Taiwanese portion of the company had no dealings with the Chinese trademark, leading to a dispute that saw the Apple iPad pulled off the shelves in some parts of China. The recent giant payout was all that could be done to get the iPad back in stores.
For Samsung execs reading this, it must feel like a bit of poetic justice taking place: Apple are constantly throwing similar injunctions out to Samsung over their Galaxy Tab range.
