Apple Faces Potential Lawsuit After Taiwanese Company Claims ” iPad” Name [Apple]

A Taiwanese monitor manufacturer is threatening to sue Apple for $1.5 billion for the ” iPad” name, claiming they registered ” I-Pad” in 2000 for a tablet which didn’t launch. Fujitsu tried (and failed), but Proview wants a stab too.

As the story goes, Proview registered the trademark within the European Union, in addition as China, Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. In 2006, Proview reportedly sold the global trademark (for each company apart from China) to a US company for the equivalent of $55,10, but they weren’t informed it was Apple-or maybe concerning Apple, as they named themselves ” IP Application Development.” This mystery company registered the iPad trademark inside the US in January of this year.

Proview’s chairman Yang Rongshan told the Financial Times that ” we’ll sue them for damages in China and within the US,” and going some method to explain their stance, he saud ” we are in big financial trouble and the trademarks are a valuable asset that can help us tackle element of that trouble.”

The whole case is pretty murky though. Attributable to Proview’s defaulting on loans, Chinese creditors took their assets-which included all their trademarks. Apple and IP Application Development have previously sued Proview in addition, for the Chinese ” IPAD” trademark.

It’s not the first time Apple’s faced such threats of lawsuits, with Cisco famously suing Apple in 2007 for the iPhone trademark. They eventually settled and went about their business, both using the iPhone name for their own products.

And needless to say, there’s Fujitsu, who earlier this year came to a couple type of secret resolution with Apple over the iPad name. [ Financial Times and Apple Insider ]

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This post is tagged: application development, earlier this year, european union, financial times, financial trouble, global trademark, insider source