Just a short thought. Apple has lost control of the iPad trademark in China but retains it in the rest of the world. Readers warn that China will be soon awash in iPad clones.
ProView Technologies, the Taiwanese company that presently controls the iPad trademark, was near bankruptcy until yesterday. Apple has $80 billion in cash.
Do we really think Cupertino will let go of an important trademark in what will eventually be the largest IT market in the world?
I don’t think so.
Should be interesting. Will they buy it out? Will they instead use the money to squeeze them using the legal system? Something else? I’m curious.
Apple appears to have lost. A buyout is likely.
I wonder why they would settle for only 1.6 billion dollars when that would probably seem cheap to Apple with 80 billion in its war chest. Apple could probably easily make that 1.6 back in a few years of market penetration in China.
80 billion! They could come to Brussels and help the world by sorting out the Eurozone crisis.
Given the history of deriviatives, CDS scams, and the like, you could also argue that Apple CAUSED the Euro crisis. But that takes a bit more analysis than we can tolerate ordinarily. And someone else would have done it sooner or later. Bygones. Just pay up.
80 billion won’t matter a damn in solving (what is erroneously referred to as the) sovereign debt crisis. How does 80b$ compare to “sovereign debt” such as in Italy’s case of 1,9 trillion €? Apple’s pile of cash, respectable as it is equals Italy’s debts’ interests for about five months.
Not to speak of the U.S. Federal debt.
By buy out, does that mean buying out the company out right, or just buying their intellectual property license? Which would be easier, and why? Just wondering.
buy ’em outright, have a distributor AND control of the trademark. get ‘er done.
Well it appears the Apple Law department will have something more interesting to work on — defending their trademarks in mainland China. This should be fun to watch.
The iPad Trademark in China belongs to ProView.
ProView got the iPad trademark in China in 2001 and in 2000 in Taiwan. Apple knows this because it already bought the Taiwanese trademark from ProView.
Apple isn’t defending “it’s” trademark in China. ProView is, from Apple.
http://m.ibtimes.com/apple-loses-ipad-trademark-china-negotiate-deal-263277.html
Apple originally accused Proview for infringing on the iPad trademark, but the Municipal Intermediate People’s Court in Shenzen, China found that Proview had actually registered the name legally in mainland China back in 2001, and in Taiwan in 2000. Apple bought Proview’s iPad trademark in 2009, but that only applied to the trademark in Taiwan; Apple would still need Proview to authorize a transfer of the trademark for mainland China.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with Chinese foreign ownership laws. Unless I’m forgetting something, I believe no foreign company can own a majority stake of a Chinese company.
“Proview controls the trademark”, according to Bob. So perhaps a buyout means buying the trademark, not the company.
Right. ProView got the iPad trademark in China 10 years earlier than Apple. It’s theirs.
I never liked the name “iPad” myself.
This is truly amusing. The Chinese have IBM’s PC business, and now they have the iPad trademark. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Proview turn around and sell the trademark to Lenovo, which would drive Apple bonkers.
ProView can sell it to whomever it wants to. But what I want to know is, what is the trademark in question. Is it the letters from the latin alphabet, lowercase i, uppercase P, lowercase a, lowercase d. Or is it the term the Chinese use to refer to the iPad in their language? And which is more important. I expect “iPad” is as meaningless to most Chinese as Chinese writing is to us. A Chinese friend told me he sees people here wearing T-Shirts with Chinese writing on it, and it sometimes says nonsense, or in one case it said “I’m stupid and smelly.” At least it wasn’t a tatoo . . .
Apple markets their products using English names in China. iPad2 in the chinese market is pronounced “iPad(chinese for numeral 2)”
Good point. Lenovo has the Thinkpad, right?
In English, doesn’t iPad mean internet-compatible Portable android device?
I always think it’s some kind of hygine related product.
Yes, LePad is a much better moniker, slightly brutish and just masculine enough to hide your adolescent insecurities. /s
As for who swings the big stick in this latest trademark dust-up, time will tell. Many have bet against Apple in similar disputes over the years, and it seems the legal team in Cupertino has always found ways to strike a deal.
Jobs found a way to strike a deal. Cupertino’s lawyers are no better nor worse than anyone else’s.
Arrr, mateys, ’tis for putting over your poked-out eye, ’tis. Arrrr.
You’re all missing a couple of important facts. First, according to reports, Apple purchased the “global rights” to the iPad trademark from Proview Electronics. A Taiwan-based subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Proview International Holdings Limited. Apple paid about US$54,000, which probably seemed to them an incredible deal (not so much now, I’m betting). The problem is the second fact, which is that the “IPAD” trademark for China seem to be held by Proview Technology, a Shenzen-based subsidiary of aforementioned Proview International Hodlings. So, depending upon what the various agreements and licenses say, either Apple didn’t buy what it think it did, Proview Electronics sold something it didn’t own, or Proview Technology doesn’t own what it think it does.
Can Taiwanese companies even own a mainland Chinese companies directly? I doubt it. I thought there were barriers to that sort of thing, forcing Taiwanese business owners to go through Hong Kong and forcing them to setup legally separate operations in China.
You all seem to be treating this as a mere business transaction. I wonder if there are far more political ramifications here than that. I see the possibility more that China, Inc – as in the government:
– Has bought into the hype that tablets and such are taking over the computer market.
– Sees Apple’s actions in the EU and US, attempting to completely own the tablet market and lock out others – particularly Android.
– Is ready to flex its own muscle to make sure that yet another domestic marketplace isn’t brand-locked again by a foreign company.
21st!
PS – electron’s don’t exist
The Chinese are used to pictographs. Apple could place an eyeball before “Pad” and the Chinese would get the picture. Apple’d have its iPad verbally and pictorially and life would go on with Apple keeping its 1.6 billion and ProView sitting on its trademark whilst fuming. And if PV’s truly broke, maybe attempts to broker a deal for a lot less than 1.6 billion could come into play.
“Do we really think Cupertino will let go of an important trademark in what will eventually be the largest IT market in the world?
”
The Apple of Steve Jobs played hardball and would not negotiate after being screwed over. Being screwed over certainly seems to describe what is happening here, given “Apple purchased the “global rights” to the iPad trademark from Proview Electronics.”
I’ve no idea of Tim Cooks philosophy, but I suspect that 95% of human beings, and 99.9% of CEOs, after being treated this way would respond: “no way in hell are you getting a dime from me again — I’d rather spend the money destroying you”. I expect phase
(a) a concentrated legal barrage against Proview demanding their money back
(b) a rebranding of iPad with a new name for the China (Asian?) market.
Apple have done this before. Airport is called AirMac in Japan because Apple couldn’t get the rights to the name (which I expect means some fool refused to sell the rights to Apple at a reasonable price, assuming Apple would cave). Apple rebranded Rendezvous as Bonjour after the same sort of thing. Apple once treated the brand name QuickTime as gold, and has now largely walked away from it.
It’s not THAT hard to get everyone to accept a new name when it matters and you are willing to make the effort.Heck, if necessary, Apple could even do it worldwide and make a splash — “everyone else is still copying iPad but we’ve moved on to the next big thing, the Apple iCompanion — not just a tablet computer it’s also an xyz…”
Cringely, what is your take on the Digitude Innovations story at TechCrunch?
What’s the chances of having a unique China-only name? I wouldn’t think it would be the end of the world to call it the iTablet or whatever in a billion consumer-plus market.
Is the name worth a billion dollars when you could spend a billion creating Chinese brand awareness for the iTablet (or whatever)?
It’s probably a mistake to assume that the Chinese government is willing to antagonize Apple in favor of a failed local company. Apple via FoxConn provides 100,000 jobs in a growth-above-all economy, while Proview provides, what again?
Also the Chinese powers that be would surely rather a domestic company create a cheap legit iPad competitor than simply steal the name outright and reinforce the stereotype about Chinese copying everything.
The Proview Taiwan vs Proview China jurisdiction is probably the biggest thorn, since the Chinese would never relent on anything Taiwan-related. But I agree with above posters that a billion or more is too much to pay when you have true brand power.
Apple can call it the iTampon and it will still outsell whatever Proview/Lenovo/BrandX comes up with. The fact that the “iPad” will be a Chinese rip-off will turn off Chinese consumers more than anything. Beneath their nationalism is a consumerism that fetishizes the foreign.
Robert X (What does X stand for) as I said privately some time ago China is a totalitarian state where Apple is nothing — all the factories are under their control — so if push comes to shove Apple loses big. No products no factories no nothing!!
China just can blackmail Apple and with compliant judges Apple loses.Apple needs many different suppliers in many countries OR have their own factories!
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