Apple sued over 'Snow Leopard' moniker in China for $80K - Page 2

Nothing personal, but can you post in English?  Please.  Thank you.

As much as this suit may seem somewhat frivolous, one still has to wonder who is doing Apple's trademark searching for them before they decide on a product's name. A little due diligence would side-step most of these kinds of claims.

Nope I feel that  little China Co is simply doing it for advertising value and even get paid a bit for it's advertising.

 

I don't think Apple should pay.  The reason is this.  It's not a company that is in any form of competition on any level whatsoever. Do you know how many companies there out there with the name of AAA?  There are ball bearings used for skate boards called Ninja, Motorcycles named Ninja, Ninja kitchen products, etc. I don't see these guys suing each other.  It's just one company that no one has ever really heard of outside their particular market trying to get more visibility off of the fame of Apple.  I mean come on.  Enough.  One is a product name version for a computer Operating System and the other one is a partial name of a company that is in the chemical industry.

 

Apple is eventually going to shelf Snow Leopard as a product they sell when Mountain Lion hits the shelves because they typically only sell two versions at a time to my knowledge since the machines get outdated.

Ποια είναι απλώς μια μορφή κλοπής.

This is a Trademark not a patent...

The iPad case was just a mess. No amount of searching would have changed that. This one... You may be right, then again, Marks are usually only granted in one language or specified languages. There is nothing nothing to indicate this case is at all valid.

They only do it if it something is directly in competition from what I've seen.  But Mac Tools wasn't suing Apple for the Mac, because they are not SIMILAR of a product and are not in direct competition.  The only reason why they had the Apple Music Corp lawsuit is because of iTunes and they didn't want to have confusion, plus they had an agreement.

 

The iPAD and the iPad lawsuit was because of the actual name and they were both computer related products.

 

Dude, funny is funny does, and using a Japanese language joke on the Chinese just ISN'T funny. It's like trying to imitate an American by using an English accent. It just doesn't match.

There is former art called "an apple" in nature. It was his point :p

the sharks have tasted blood !

Yes, it's a frivolous and ridiculous suit. However, as "A Grain Of Salt" pointed out, Apple themselves have filed that kind of ridiculous suit already, so... lawyers, rejoyce.

God, what a bunch of opportunistic slime bags. So can the west start "suing' these Chinese companies for benefitting from western chemistry, electricity, mass production equipment, you-name-it, which allowed them to even know how chemicals work in the first place, let alone be able to manufacture them?

 

Apple, take these idiots to court and run them into total bankruptcy, please. This has to stop now.

!

Uh, have you been paying attention at all to the death of a thousand cuts the Chinese have been dishing out to western and Japanese companies the last 20 years via patent infringement, intellectual property theft, pirated goods, etc. on a scale unprecedented in modern history? Equally appalling are the western 'globalization' apologists who are quite happy to close down their factories in North America and Europe to follow the labor to where it's cheapest. Ironically, 'Communist' China seems to not uphold labor standards and effectively bans labor unions.

 

'Why innovate when you can steal' must surely be the unwritten motto of the CPC and many Chinese businesses in general. Personally I think all western companies/nations should form a NATO-type alliance to prevent them from playing one western company/country off the other. Now. 

 

 Apple MUST simply refuse to pay once now, or many times down the road, rather than give in to this 'price of admission for doing business in China' nonsense (they still need us much more than we need them). If 80K is such a pittance and the 'honorable' businessmen in question are simply defending 'their' trademark, why not just ask Apple for a dollar? Face it pal, 80K can buy a lot of chop-sticks.

The thing that gets me about these Chinese trademark claims is there insistence on a letter of apology.  Really?  Is that going to make things peachy?  Maybe if Apple uses pretty stationary and includes some flowers....

The thing that gets me about these Chinese trademark claims is there insistence on a letter of apology.  Really?  Is that going to make things peachy?  Maybe if Apple uses pretty stationary and includes some flowers....

Some of you guys are complete morons. Google suggests that the population of China is over 1.3 billion. Remarks about China and copying most likely apply to a very small percentage of these individuals. Companies that manufacture there accept the good and bad aspects of doing so. The US provides them with a stable banking system. China provides extremely large quantities of cheap labor. This is factored against the cost of doing business there which would include any issues with government stability, costs involving PR concerns such as child labor, lawsuits, etc. It's just an issue of benefits and risks. This would be the case with any country chosen as a primary base for manufacturing.

 

I'm not including the Proview issue in this statement. That relates to worldwide trademark negotiation and "seller's remorse". The owner was not Chinese. Anyway I'm tired of the Chinese bashing. If the concerns outweighed the benefits, companies would have moved on.

 

Copy it and then paste it into translate.google.com :)

If you really think that the Chinese are communist, you don't understand a thing in our world.

Just saying, but,

Now this is a joke gone rotten LOL
...you know, ummm, that their is real "adam and eve inc", they are in the adult film and the NSFW adult toy business... and adam and eve inc most like uses apple computers to edit the adult films they produce...
Edited by haar - 7/3/12 at 4:34am

In most of the world, this situation would not be a problem. A trademark is issued for a class of products. That is, you file for a trademark in only a specific field. Apple obtained a trademark for Snow Leopard in the field of computer operating system software. But that doesn't prevent getting a trademark in an unrelated field. In the US, there are also "snow leopard" trademarks in remote controlled toys, vodka, basketball teams, motorcycle accessories, and films. This is not uncommon for the same trademark to be granted to different companies in different markets.

If there is a dispute, a court would have to decide if one trademark infringed on the other. When this happens, it generally comes down to the standard of whether the newer trademark causes confusion with consumers. In the above example, it is unlikely that a consumer would be confused between a motorcycle saddle bag and computer operating system software, so the trademarks can coexist. OTOH, in the case of 'Apple' itself, there was enough concern as to whether Apple (the computer company) was infringing on the trademark of Apple (the music company) that it had to go to court and eventually an agreement was reached.

Now, I'm not saying that this is what happened in China because I don't know Chinese law. But your assumption that Apple failed on trademark searching is not necessarily valid. If Chinese law is similar, it is entirely possible that Apple did a search and concluded that there would be no confusion between a laundry detergent and operating system software. The Chinese company apparently disagrees and the courts will have to hear it. It is entirely possible that Apple did sufficient due diligence and figured it wasn't a problem.

I guess I must have missed the news that China changed to a democracy. When did that happen?

China is self-defined as a Communist state. Whether they meet some arbitrary definition of 'communist' is not really the point (and clearly they are including some major elements of capitalism, at least in how their businesses are run). The government calls itself communist, so I think it's reasonable to do so.

So after Apple caved into Proview, the small fry patent trolls figure Apple is an easy mark.

So, how many people are going to be confused by household chemicals like detergents and toothpaste and a computer OS?

 

Toothpaste/detergent powered Macs coming to a Chinese store near you...

China is well known for copying. It's not a small percentage. I can list countless examples of Chinese companies copying other companies products, but I don't feel the need to do so. The Chinese government copies as well. For a few quick examples, the Chinese J-11B fighter is basically a knockoff of Russia's Su-27. JAC Motors in China unveiled their new truck earlier in the year. It's an exact carbon copy of the Ford F-150. The Chinese don't innovate, they copy is the bottom line. 

While there's some truth to what you say, it's exaggerated.

1. Not all Chinese companies act that way - and respect for intellectual property is increasing.

2. I believe that China licensed the SU-27 from the former Soviet Union. They didn't just start copying.

There are certainly cases where they have done so, but it's not as universal as you imply.

From the Article dudes:

"Jiangsu Xuebao used the trademark to market a touchscreen ad display and a mobile EPR software suite."

Touchscreen...
Software suite...

Read.

Daily chemical may be a subsidiary of a larger corporation...


http://xuebao.en.ec21.com/

Sounds real computery.

Mmm... not too computery, but maybe also a subsidiary.  My conspiracy theorist thinks they are wholly-owned by Google and Apple is in real trouble.

that is freaking hilarious! kk

The problem is, the Chinese will sue over the patent for gunpowder, get an injunction and take over the world without anyone else firing a shot. ;-)

This wasn't even funny when "I Love Lucy" did it - overused, repetitive stereotyping is just not funny.

Yeah, but it's a bit like the "Citizens for a Clean Environment" actually being a front for coal producers - the name does not really mean anything. The Chinese government is not a Communist state - no country actually is, or ever was. Oh, and it's also not a Republic either.

Looks like you have some editing to do over there, then.

Let's see. The Chinese government calls themselves 'Communist'. Virtually the rest of the world calls them 'Communist'.

One anonymous person on AI says they're not.

Hmmmmm. Who to believe?

*Facepalm*

Time to quickly register a few trademarks sounding like names of cats.