iPads seized after Chinese firm claims trademark

Feb 13, 2012, 13:05 GMT

Beijing - Officials in at least one Chinese city have seized Apple iPads following a court ruling in favour of a company that claims to own the Chinese trademark for the computers, reports said on Monday.

Local media and vendors said some iPads were seized in the northern city of Shijiazhuang after a court in the southern province of Guangdong said the Chinese company Shenzhen Proview had the right to use the iPad name.

The Shijiazhuang-based Hebei Youth Daily said officials had seized dozens of iPads in the city's Xinhua district, while other vendors told dpa they had removed iPads from display to avoid their confiscation.

'Yes, we have taken it off the shelves but you can still buy it,' one vendor said by telephone from the Taihe computer market in Shijiazhuang.

As well as winning the legal right to use the iPad name in China, Shenzhen Proview also sued two Chinese electronics retailers in a bid to stop them from selling iPads.

A Shanghai court plans to hear another petition by Shenzhen Proview next week to ban Apple Inc from selling the iPad in China, state media said.

'We are asking the court to order Apple to stop selling and marketing the iPad in China. We also demand an apology,' the China Daily newspaper quoted Xie Xianghui, a lawyer for the Chinese company, as saying last week.

Proview Shenzhen had not demanded compensation in its lawsuits, Xie said.

He said Proview Shenzhen registered the iPad trademark in China in 2001.

But Proview Taiwan, a company 'associated with, but not legally representing' the Chinese company, sold worldwide rights to the trademark to a British firm in 2009, China Daily said.

The British firm resold the trademark to Apple, which launched the iPad in 2010, but Shenzhen Proview insisted that it still held the trademark in China, it said.

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