Apple offered 100 million yuan (£9.8 million) earlier this week to settle its trademark dispute with Chinese firm, Proview International Holdings over the iPad name.
The Beijing Times reports that the offer was made to secure the right to use the name in China, but Proview declined. It is believed to want 400 million yuan (£39.2 million) in order to pay off creditors.
On Tuesday, a federal judge approved an Apple motion to dismiss a suit brought by Proview in the US, ruling that the argument should be resolved in Hong Kong. The US lawsuit asserted that by using a proxy company based in the UK, IP Application Development, to negotiate with a Taiwanese subsidiary of Proview, Apple acted ‘with oppression, fraud, and/or malice.’ That negotiation resulted in IP Application Development buying the right to use the iPad name in China on behalf of Apple for £35,000.
A court in China ruled last year that the deal with Proview Electronics Co., a Taiwanese subsidiary of PIH, to licence the iPad trademark in China was invalid because the TAiwanese company did not own the name. The ‘iPad’ trademark is owned by Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Co., a separate wholly-owned subsidiary of PIH.
Proview International Holdings is in serious financial trouble. It has been run by administrators since 2009. And its shares were suspended on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2010 after it defaulted on payments to creditors and suppliers and failed to publish financial results. It has been warned that it faces delisting if it doesn’t publish results and demonstrate sufficient working capital soon.
In a letter to Proview founder, Yang Rongshan, Apple claimed that Proview had breached principles of good faith and dealing by misrepresenting the facts of the case to the press and warned that it could take legal action.
