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Apple Case in Shanghai Is Suspended

The iPad attracting shoppers in Shanghai. A Chinese company claims to own the rights to the iPad name in mainland China.Credit...Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

SHANGHAI — A local court has rejected an effort by a Chinese company to stop Apple from selling its popular iPad here amid a trademark dispute over who owns the rights to the iPad name.

The Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court released a statement on its Web site Thursday saying that it would not rule because a related trademark court case between the two companies was pending in Guangdong Province, in southern China.

An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the court decision and said the company would continue to challenge the position of the Chinese company, Proview International, which claims to own the trademark rights to the iPad name in mainland China.

“Proview’s injunction request was rejected,” Carolyn Wu, the Apple spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview Thursday. “The court granted Apple’s request to suspend the case.” Apple insists that one of its subsidiaries acquired the rights to the iPad name in China from the Chinese company several years before the tablet computer was released.

But the Proview parent company, a computer display maker based in Taiwan, says its subsidiary in Shenzhen, which is in Guangdong Province, retains the rights to the iPad name in the mainland. Proview is facing bankruptcy and has said it is trying to force Apple to pay some compensation.

A lawyer representing Proview in the Shanghai case, Xie Xianghui, said he was surprised by the Shanghai ruling but that Proview would continue to press its case in the city.

“We think the court ruling is against China’s trademark law and it is completely wrong,” Mr. Xie said by telephone Thursday. “We are going file our application for reconsideration of the case as soon as possible.”

The dispute has been an annoyance to Apple at a time when the company’s products are growing increasingly popular in China. Some of the world’s busiest Apple stores are in Beijing and Shanghai.

In recent weeks, Proview has had more success in several smaller Chinese cities, persuading the local authorities to either block the sale of the iPad in their regions or to confiscate some of the product.

Shanghai was the Chinese company’s first major test of whether it could disrupt Apple’s selling apparatus in China.

Apple says its subsidiary acquired rights to the iPad name from Proview several years ago but that the Chinese company had failed to properly register the change in China. Proview is now trying to deny that it sold the rights, Apple says.

Gu Huini contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Court Refuses Injunction In Apple Trademark Case. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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