At the Intermediate People’s Court in Huizhou, Proview International issued a statement through their attorney, that the Intermediate People’s Court issued a ruling banning distributers from selling iPads in China.
Proview claims that Apple is violating their trademark and that they own the rights to the name “iPad” in China. Carolyn Wu, an Apple spokeswoman responded to the lawsuit with the following:
“We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago. Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter,”
Despite the ruling in China there are a few distributors in China still selling the iPads. It has been said that Proview might be filing the same claims in the United States for $2 billion in damages over the trademark.
UPDATE: The ban in China was short lived as most of these litigations are and the ban never made its way to the United States although we are still watching the Apple battle from all ends. Most of these lawsuits and/or filings tend to be from Apple and not against them although they are big issues for both sides of the table. Hopefully we will see a day when this all ends and the innovation starts to take its place as it once did. Apple may have been the first real smartphone (in our opinion) but there are alot of people in the game and its time that everyone just realize that mobile is a broad market with an incredible amount of competition.