Apple can't call an iPad an iPad in China, says court. | Hacker News Reader

Apple can't call an iPad an iPad in China, says court.

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48 pointsadhipg41 comments

Wow $1.6 billion. I remember a case in China few years ago when a peasant found a 3cm bug in a bottle of Sprite. He sued Coca-Cola for 4 rmb ($0.64). The court ruled in his favor but only awarded him 2.05 rmb.

I wonder if this is a change in heart in how much the Chinese courts will be awarding in future cases.

That's like comparing an ant and an elephant.... how does it even compare? One is a bottle of Sprite, and not even a class action lawsuit, the other is a trademark for selling rights in the entire country.

I was making a point that Chinese courts generally don't award large lawsuits. The peasant sued for 4 rmb but the court felt that was too much. Here is the news article if you are interested: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2010-02/04/content_942...

Here is another case dealing with trademarks where the Chinese courts awarded nickels on dimes.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2006/01/11/afx2444090.html

OK, got it. But it would have been easier to accept your point from the beginning if you'd have used the chocolate example in the first place. That's a much better comparison.

We don't really have the whole story here.

If you read the news story here from China: http://topics.scmp.com/news/china-business-watch/article/App...

> The Hong Kong court found that Apple and IP Application, while drawing up the agreement for that sale, discovered the two mainland iPad trademarks were not owned by Taipei-based Proview Electronics as they were led to believe, but by Proview Technology.

> Apple said the defendants, while acknowledging the mistake, refused to rectify the matter and asked Apple to pay US$10 million for the two trademarks. Apple and IP began their action against the Proview group on May 20 last year.

All of this points that Apple didn't exactly do this intentionally.

Although I don't know if it's fair to tar them all with the same brush, I find it ironic that a Chinese company would cry foul on trademarks.

It's just a desperate company approaching bankruptcy doing what they can to stay alive.

They may be a desperate company approaching bankruptcy, but they did own the trademark for the name long before Apple wanted to use it.

What does it take to own a trademark in China? What is the actual value of their trademark? Until I know that I'm more inclined to think they've won the lottery than built any value on the name iPad.

QFT

> Proview Technology (Shenzhen) is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-headquartered Proview International Holdings Limited, which also has a branch in Taipei.

For some bizarre reason this made me smile.

I'd smile even more if the chinese company was a manufacturer of those cheap knock-offs

I think it's extremely unlikely Apple would sell the iPad under any other name. The 'brand' is too strong—and is probably worth $1.6b to them.

$1.6b in lost sales? Even if Apple call it something else, everyone will still call it an iPad.

If I were Apple I'd come up with a name unique to the Chinese market.

$1.6B is nothing to Apple. They had $80B in cash at the end of September and could very well pass $100B after the holidays.

I don't think there's any way Apple will dilute the brand of one of their flagship products in their hottest market. Plus, it works both ways: they would have to find a trademark that works everywhere else so that competitors don't snatch up the new trademark in other countries.

Having the money and it being nothing are different.

If I need to I could come up with $10,000 for something. That doesn't mean that it's not significant and it doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do if I have an alternative.

The cost of switching to a different name isn't $0, though. Both the cost and added complexity is significant. Some considerations:

* Cost of finding and registering a different trademark that's available worldwide.

* Cost of developing new marketing materials.

* Cost of tweaking software to use new name.

* Cost of tweaking production lines to print new name on devices and packaging.

* Cost of lost sales due to customer confusion (Chinese traveling to America; Foreigners traveling to China).

I'm not saying that there are no costs, there clearly are, the most significant of which is brand dilution.

What I'm saying is that $1.6bn is clearly not nothing, not to Apple, not to anyone.

You know how many lawyers you can buy for $1.6B? Here's a hint: LOTS OF LAWYERS.

You know how many officials you can bribe with $1.6 B? Here's a hint: LOTS OF THEM.

> If I were Apple I'd come up with a name unique to the Chinese market.

Apple has done this for their lesser product. AirPort is released as AirMac in Japan, for example.

In China, all laws can be trumped by what is good for the people. It is written in their constitution. Since Apple provides something like 1M jobs in China, it is unlikely a court ruling would be enforced. This problem will go away with one phone call.

“Their copyright infringement is very clear.”

Wrong translation, wrong statement or different laws?

Other than that: Boring.

When I read the article, it actually seems a bit complicated and not so cut and dry.

If foreign companies want to enter China, they need to obey Chinese law, especially when those laws aren't malicious, make sense, and are enforced correctly, even if the result is ludicrous. Any country should expect the same when a foreign company comes to compete within their shores. And in this particular case, it doesn't seem ludicrous.

Here's a ludicrous example, a close cousin to domain name squatting:

http://www.chinahearsay.com/coca-cola-plays-it-smart-in-its-...

What Apple has going for it here is the fact that it has Foxconn as a key manufacturing partner, which is a huge employer in China. That may give it some political power. Who knows. In the end, $1.6b is chump change for Apple, and it may be worth it for them to just settle.

  What Apple has going for it here is the fact that it has
  Foxconn as a key manufacturing partner, which is a huge
  employer in China. That may give it some political power.

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. That doesn't count as "political power" in China.

Foxconn employs over a million Chinese citizens. They undoubtably have enormous amounts of guanxi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi) with all levels of the government, from local to national.

I am familiar with how China operates. Being close with the govt/CCP in China is standard practice.

So you must also be aware that Foxconn has come under very intense media scrutiny in _China_ since a couple of years ago. Consider this sequence of events:

[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Foxconn-Sues-Two-Journalists-...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chinese_labour_unrest

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07foxconn....

Of course this observation doesn't depend on Foxconn being Taiwanese. But the two are not necessarily unrelated given the increasingly nationalist trajectory of Chinese policy. And more in response to the nature of Foxconn's guanxi with the govt, no amount of it can save Foxconn from uniform wage increases or increasingly negative _Chinese_ media coverage.

Here's a ludicrous example, a close cousin to domain name squatting:

http://www.chinahearsay.com/coca-cola-plays-it-smart-in-its-...

It would be more useful if other bottles were included in the comparison. It doesn't matter if two brands of water bottle look alike, if all the other water bottles not pictured also look that way.

The article's pretty clear. Proview registered the iPad trademark in 2001, Apple licensed it for use outside of China in 2009, but then went on to use the trademark in mainland China without signing a licensing agreement.

That's copyright infringement, plain and simple.

That sounds a lot like trademark infringement, not copyright infringement.

I'm far from an expert in Chinese law, but I could see the two being reasonably treated as equivalent.

Trademarks and copyrights aren't equivalent. I'm not licensed to practice in China, but from everything I've ever read, Chinese law [1] isn't so different (at this level) from that of other countries.

TRADEMARKS: Generally speaking, a trademark is something that signifies or evokes a product provided, sponsored, or endorsed by a particular source. TRADEMARK EXAMPLES: * Word marks such as Apple and iPad; * Logos such as the apple logo; * Sounds such as the "Intel inside" sequence of notes; * Colors, even (sometimes) such as pink for Owens-Corning-brand attic insulation.

(Trademarks are for products; service marks serve the same function for services.)

In a sense, the "owner" of a trademark is really just its government-appointed custodian or guardian. (It's sort of like the old joke: Dogs have masters, cats have staff.) When a trademark owner enforces its rights against an infringer, what the owner is really doing is performing a public service, namely keeping the market free of marks that would be likely to confuse the public.

COPYRIGHT: In contrast, copyright applies to original works of "authorship," regardless whether associated with a product or service.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_the_Pe...

Further analysis seems to say that this was indeed a poor translation. It's a trademark case, not a copyright case. ugh was on the mark.

I used to own a Proview CRT monitor back in the day. My, my, how things have changed.

What does the word "iPad" look like in Chinese?

Apple doesn't use Chinese characters in their Chinese branding, so it looks like "iPad". Also chinese has adopted quite a bit of English these days, for instance a music player is an MP3, and a portable video player like and iPod touch is an MP4. The M and P are pronounced like English, and the number is spoken in chinese. Interestingly, "Apple" is almost always written and spoken in Chinese: 苹果 - ping guo - which has the same meaning as the English.

iPad is a strong brand, and I can't see Apple selling it as anything else. However it is not worth $1.6b. If the company holding the copyright wasn't about to go to the dogs I'd be more concerned. Apple can enter into a lengthy legal wrangle and wait for the company in question to fold.

Even if the company folds, the name 'iPad' had already been registered before Apple decided to use it, and the more 'iPad's' Apple sells in China, the more they will have to pay up eventually.

Trade mark, not copyright.

I'm sure whoever decided this got a nice kickback.

So I can't get a real iPad from a fake Apple store in China? I guess Apple will have to open some more real stores and sell renamed 'fake' iPads under another name. haha

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