APPLE HAS agreed to pay $60 million to settle a trademark dispute with Proview Technology (Shenzhen), which has spent the past two years trying to block the sale of the iPad in China, a market that has underpinned Apple’s rapid international expansion.
The US group agreed to settle with the mainland division of Proview International, a Hong Kong-listed technology group, in return for ownership of the iPad trademark in China, according to a statement by the Higher People’s Court of Guangdong. The deal took effect yesterday.
Apple is preparing to launch the iPad 3 in China, with local regulators giving their approval in March for the device to go on sale in the country in spite of the lawsuit with Proview Shenzhen. Apple has yet to announce the launch date.
Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA, a Beijing-based consultancy, said the settlement would have a “modest” impact on Apple’s sales in China, where the company was already doing very well. “If the product is a hit in the US, it’s a hit in China too,” he said.
Proview Shenzhen registered the iPad trademark in China in 2001, nine years before Apple unveiled its iPad. Separately, Proview’s Taiwan unit had registered the iPad trademark in the EU and six other markets between 2000 and 2004, which it sold to Apple for £35,000 ($54,800) in 2009 – a deal Apple insisted had included China. This was challenged by Proview Shenzhen.
In a series of rulings since 2010, courts in the US and Hong Kong had found in favour of Apple but a number of lower courts in mainland China supported Proview Shenzhen’s position.
Little was done to stop the sale of the iPad as local courts had refused to back Proview Shenzhen’s application to block shipments of the iPad in and out of China, where the product is manufactured, and to stop local retailers from selling Apple’s iPads.
China is Apple’s biggest market outside of the US and where it had about 65 per cent of the market share for tablet computers in the first quarter, according to technology research firm IDC. But it faces growing competition from local PC-maker Lenovo, which launched its Le Pad last year, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012)
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