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China Tech Co Prepares Major Lawsuit Against Apple

This article is more than 10 years old.

A relatively unknown Chinese tech company is suing Apple (AAPL) over an alleged trademark violation.

The week long dispute between privately held Proview and Apple over the iPad trademark went into higher gear on Friday when Proview said it will sue Apple for a violation of their agreement by using the trademark to compete against it.

"If everything goes well, we might file a claim against Apple in the United States a month from now," Yang Long San, founder of the Proview Group, said in a news conference in Beijing.

According to Proview, IP Application Development, which bought the trademark in 2009 from the Taiwan-based Proview and then sold it to Apple, promised it would not produce anything that competes with Proview's products with the same trademark.

Yang said Proview started producing a device called Internet Personal Access Device in 2000 that looks like a small ordinary PC and uses touch-panel technology. The products were sold in Europe and the U.S., Yang told reporters.

"According to international trademark law, despite the differences between the appearance and technology of the iPad of Proview and that of Apple, they belong to the same category. So Apple was in breach of the contract," Xie Xianghui, a lawyer representing Proview Technology Shenzhen, told China Daily.

Li Su, a Proview consultant who was also present at the news conference, said he had talked to three lawyers in the U.S. and had been told the claim could go up to $2 billion.

Apple declined to comment on Proview's latest move when China Daily reached it after the news conference.

In a statement this week, Apple accused Proview of not honoring its agreement to transfer the rights to use the trademark for the product in China.

See: Apple Keeps Selling iPad In China As Trademark Dispute Escalates--Forbes