ABC News: “The battle between an ailing Chinese electronics maker and Apple Inc. over the iPad name is just as much a tale of obsolescence in the fast-moving global technology industry as it is a legal row over a trademark.
When businessman Rowell Yang Long-san launched his own iPAD-branded device in 2000, a decade before Apple unveiled its hit tablet, he declared it received an “overwhelming market response.”
“We are confident that we will be one of the major players in the new post-PC era — the information appliance era,” Yang said in the announcement of his new Internet Personal Access Device, which was jointly developed with National Semiconductor.
But unlike Apple’s iPad, introduced in 2010, Proview’s version failed to hit the market sweet spot that might have made it a hit. Today, the company is deeply in debt and threatened with removal from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
But Proview still claims ownership of the trademark in China and is waging its fight on multiple fronts: court cases, asking commercial authorities to ban iPad sales in dozens of Chinese cities, and seeking a ban on exports of iPads from China where Apple supplier Foxconn employs about a million people in manufacturing the sleek tablet computer.”
This law suit shows that copyright and IPR cuts both ways!
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 