We've all heard the Apple/Proview story innumerable times already. Proview had a product called the IPAD, Apple set up a shell company to buy the trademark from them. Once the iPad became the roaring success it is the now near bankrupt Proview states that, well, yes, it did sell the trademark but not the one for China internally. And they'd like some more money please.
That might sound a little harsh as a precis but it's not a million miles from the detailed truth. So, how's the various court cases going?
Apple has won one of them: the one in California, the one that Apple was always entirely likely to so win:
A California judge tossed out a lawsuit in which the Chinese firm Proview Electronics Co Ltd accused Apple Inc of tricking them into selling the "iPad" name for less than it might have.
Proview, which is also suing Apple in China over alleged illegal use of the iPad name, filed a lawsuit in California superior court in February, saying the U.S. consumer electronics company deceived it by purchasing the rights to the name through a special-purpose vehicle.
Proview's essential case here, "we didn't know what was going on" was never likely to interest an American judge. Corporations are assumed to know what they're doing. That's not quite the reason the judge gave for tossing the complaint, true, but it would be difficult to believe any other outcome.
However, there's also still the case in China. And this doesn't seem to be going Apple's way to quite the same extent:
Ma Xiaodong, an attorney for Proview Technology, told China Business Journal that his client "has been trying to negotiate with Apple for a long time" and now the focus has turned to the amount of compensation.
Xie Xianghui, another of Proview's attorneys, confirmed that the two sides are negotiating a settlement figure with the Guangdong High People's Court acting as moderator.
"We can feel an obvious change in Apple's attitude," Xie said. "Before, although they agreed to negotiate, they never actually took any action. But now they are sitting there and talking with us about key problems.
"The process is very tough, but both sides have a positive attitude," he added.
Why would that be, why would Apple be negotiating?
Fu Shuangjian, deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, said at a press conference on April 24 that Proview Technology is still the owner of the iPad trademark.
"According to Chinese law, both parties involved in a trademark transfer should apply with us together (to make the transfer legal)," he explained.
Although Fu's remarks have no legal power, industry insiders believe the statement helped force Apple to back to the negotiating table.
More weight was added by Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of the National Copyright Administration, who said the agency regards the Shenzhen company as the rightful trademark owner.
I don't think I'm going to shock anyone by suggesting that there's a little more political influence over the courts in China than there is in the US. That we have State officials stating that Proview definitely still owns the internal to China trademark gives an indication (no more, but no less) as to how the courts might rule. Thus perhaps best for Apple to reach an agreement with Proview and make some form of cash settlement.
Which would make a number of state owned banks very happy as that IPAD trademark is now considered the only remaining valuable asset of Proview itself. And Proview owes $400 million to those banks.
We seem to be getting down to the end game here. The crux of which is, how many pennies on the dollar of those loans are the banks going to get back out of an Apple deal with Proview?
