APPLE Inc. filed a lawsuit against a Shenzhen computer screen manufacturer over the ownership of the iPad trademark at the Shenzhen Intermediate People s Court on Wednesday.
Apple asked the court to confirm its ownership of the exclusive rights to the trademark, iPad, and demanded Proview Technology Shenzhen Co. pay legal costs of 2 million yuan (US$300,000).
Proview Technology argued that Apple had no right to use the trademark on the mainland because the trademark belonged to Proview Technology in Shenzhen, not its parent company in Taiwan.
Apple said it had paid 35,000 pounds (US$56,590) to Proview Technology Shenzhen s parent company, Proview International Holdings (Taiwan), for the trademark rights in global areas in 2006, which included the right to the trademark on the mainland.
Proview Technology (Shenzhen) said, however, that Proview International (Taiwan) had no right to sell the rights to use the trademark on the mainland because they were different companies with different shareholder structures and registration.
In 2000, Proview Electronics Co., another subsidiary of Proview International (Taiwan), registered the iPad trademark in Europe and other parts of the world, while in 2001, Proview Technology (Shenzhen) registered the trademark for iPad PCs on the mainland. Apple bought the trademark from Proview International s Taiwan subsidiary for 35,000 pounds in 2006, but did not obtain trademark rights from the Shenzhen branch, the newspaper reported.
Apple told the court that the trademark rights on the mainland were included in the deal signed with the chairman of Proview International (Taiwan), Yang Rongshan, on Dec. 23, 2009. It also provided e-mails from Yang on the matter. In the e-mails, Yang said the company owned the trademark rights on the mainland and would transfer ownership to Apple.
However, Proview Technology (Shenzhen) said it was Apple s mistake to believe that ownership of the trademark rights on mainland belonged to the parent company.
Although Proview Technology (Shenzhen) was nominally a subsidiary of Proview International (Taiwan), the two companies were actually two different companies with different shareholder structures and industrial and commercial registrations.
More importantly, they were in different jurisdictions of law, so Proview International (Taiwan) had no right to sell the trademark rights on the mainland to anyone. It was fraud for Apple to buy a Shenzhen company s trademark rights from a Taiwan company, Xiao Caiyuan, a lawyer representing the Shenzhen company, told the court.
Established in 1989 in Taipei, Proview International (Taiwan) was listed in Hong Kong in 1997. The newspaper said Proview Technology (Shenzhen), which had been one of the four biggest computer screen manufacturers in the world, was now in financial difficulties and winning the lawsuit could be its last hope.
The intermediate court is yet to hand down its decision.
(Wang Yuanyuan)
