Chinese Court Orders Ban On Apple's iPad 190
zacharye writes "A lawyer representing Proview International on Monday announced that the Intermediate People's Court in Huizhou, a city in southern China, ruled that distributors should stop selling iPads in China. From the article: 'The ruling, which was also reported widely in China's state media, may not have a far-reaching effect. In its battle with Apple, Proview is utilizing lawsuits in several places and also requesting commercial authorities in 40 cities to block iPad sales. Apple Inc. said in a statement Monday that its case is still pending in mainland China. The company has appealed to Guangdong's High Court against an earlier ruling in Proview's favor.'"
Move? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Move? (Score:3, Insightful)
it would lock out apple from the chinese market - which is bigger than the us one....
Re:Move? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is whether the Taiwan operations had the right to sell to Apple. China believes they didn't. It's kind of like the SCO ownership of Unix... they didn't.
Re:Move? (Score:2, Insightful)
That would last for all of a few months to a year before they're no longer are capable of making the actual products and instead are just making outdated stuff or knock-offs, and there is no Chinese appliance computer maker with the design (both industrial and GUI) skills of Apple. Generally, if you buy knock-off electronics, well, they're of knock-off quality -- i.e., shitty. Your idea doesn't seem like a long-term plan for continued revenues.
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
"invented after they found out the trademark rights had been sold to Apple"
Which is it were they fully involved and fully aware or did they find out the rights were sold after the fact? You can't have it both ways.
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
So if I give the guy at the Apple store $10 for the global rights to the Apple trademark I'm good right? Or only if his name is Bob?
So...don't sell there. (Score:4, Insightful)
Take the iPad out of China; sell it in all the surrounding countries. Anybody know what the sales number is for iPads in mainland China? Apple can take the Chinese strategy of just "wait them out." It's not like the iPad market is going to live or die on Chinese sales, and they're already worried about meeting demand for iPads every time a new one pops up.
Meanwhile, get an agent to pursue purchase of the assets of the nearly defunct ProView.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
American companies and American taxpayers fund the development of technology, and then China turns around and steals the designs and makes a profit off of it. We're basically subsidizing Chinese industry, with U.S. corporations and taxpayers paying money to help China put U.S. workers out of business. The Chinese government turns a blind eye to all of this, or perhaps more likely, the government is actively encouraging this industrial espionage, just like the Soviets had a strategy of stealing Western technology during the Cold War.
Yes, Apple should obey the letter of the law, and perhaps they didn't do that in this case. But it seems remarkably hypocritical for a Chinese company to be dragging a Western company to court for intellectual property violations. Somehow when the theft goes the other way, nobody seems to notice.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Hypocrisy, maybe. But, at least 60% of our "intellectual property" is unethical bullshit.
Slide to unlock, anyone?
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
If I buy a car, stereo, computer, whatever from some dude, it's mine, right?
But, what happens when the cops knock on my door, with a search warrant, and search my home for that stuff I bought? They say it's stolen. And, I'm arrested, booked, and charged with "receiving stolen property".
I think Apple is in a parallel position here. They can expect to be slapped around a little for trying to bully the rightful owner of this "intellectual property".
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually just the opposite. Taiwan doesn't consider itself part of China, while China considers Taiwan another province, completely owned and controlled by China.
Saying that contracts in Taiwan don't apply in mainland China would be like saying that Taiwan is NOT a part of China, but an independent state, or some sort of autonomous zone, which is NOT what China has historically claimed, nor is the official position of the government.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
But if I bought the TV at Best Buy, paid the man in the blue shirt at the register and got a receipt for it, you can't realistically charge me with receiving stolen property if it turns out the cashier was manipulating the register on his day off and just pocketed the money.
Apple isn't claiming they bought it off the back of a truck from some guy, they claim to have done due dilligence and they did actually buy it from a company that should have had legal rights to transfer the rights in several jurisdictions. Proview Taiwan and Proview PRC aren't two companies with the same name, there's a real corporate link between the two.
Either Proview Taiwan fraudulently misrepresented the fact they had been empowered to sell on behalf of their parent company, or once Proview realized who really bought the trademark they figured they let it go too cheap and could extort a bit more money for it.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahhh, history repeating itself all over the globe? Not that long ago the US were doing exactly that with European "intellectual property", blatantly ignoring patents and copyrights whenever it suited them. Rather hypocritical indeed.