How ironic that a Chinese company is suing a US company for alleged Intellectual Property violation/theft when their entire citizenry has no regard for US IP rights when it comes to movies, music, books, etc.
And how ironic that your most likely lack of education and understanding of foreign cultures and economic state of other countries led you to make such blanket accusations.
"entire citizenry?" -- this reveals that you do not understand or lack a full grasp of the meaning of certain words. English is not my native tongue, so when I am in doubt, I go online. You may indeed learn a lesson, if you take the time to look up and understand the differences among the words -- some, few, many, majority, most, entire, everybody, anybody, etc. or even the correct usage of citizenry,
You may not be aware of this but we Americans owe many Chinese people, a great amount of money, And, they also own quite a bit of America, as well as other countries of the world. And so many of these Chinese may not even consider your standard of luxury and aesthetics tp be good enough for them. Not all the one billion of them but more than you ever have grasp from your understanding of other cultures and peoples of the world.
It is possible also that you might have missed many classes in math, or just too lazy intellectually to grasp the power of numbers. But, it is not too late.
Take the number one (1) billion [a number with nine zeros, after the "one"] and attach to that the term Chinese people in China (not in the entire world). Do the simple math of sequentially multiply with 1 percent to 10 percent.
That is the potential market that Apple understands could be tapped for its products, nothwithstanding the accusation by Apple haters that Apple products are overpriced.
Do you even read the papers or get online? Or even Apple Insider? If you do, and grasp them. Why do you think Apple in the US were investigated for "supposed discrimination" against Asians who were perceived to be too poor to afford Apple products? The reality is that "some", perhaps even "many" but not the "entire" Asian customers visiting the Apple stores in New York, New Jersey, and other large cities could afford Apple products. And yet, they visit Apple stores and buy them, sometimes two (I believe the imposed limit) and pay cash. I did not make this up, there were newspaper articles documenting this practice based from personal accounts. Quite a number of these Apple iPhone and iPad buyers actually claim that they could make a decent living doing that, earning $50-100 a day -- not bad for the homeless or unemployed. It beats asking for a dollar from pedestrians.
The same was observed in many stores in China where Apple products were sold, prompting Apple to close the store in Beijing(???) for a brief period during the recent iPad and iPhone introduction. These purchases do not even take into account, those purchased in Hongkongs, and in other metro areas in Asia.
The "profesional buyers" of Apple products are part of an unofficial market that attempt to quence the thirst of tens of thousands, if not millions soon who want to buy "authentic" Apple products.
Yes, rampant consumption is very much alive in China and other countries in Asia. And some have the extra money to spend for such luxury items. Many are even willing to pay premium price to be among the first to have such Apple products. Also, if you looked at the pictures of the customers of Apple stores in China, many of them are young people, most likely students and your usual aberage workers, but understand and appreciate the value of Apple products, not just as status symbol. More than likely, many of them do not belong to the upper 10% or let alone the upper 1% of the population.
Among the upper 1% it is not unusual that they give away for free last year's consumer products -- to their foreign domestic help -- to give room for the new products that they want to buy. The domestic helpers would then bring these giveaways to their home countries, like the Philippines and some other Asian countries. I should know this because my home country is in Asia where many Chinese live. I have not been to China myself but I have a number of relatives who either live, work or regularly visit China. I have also interacted with many Chinese since I was young.
One last thing, if a Chinese perceives you to be honest and responsible, (s)he will not hesitate to lend you money or goods, without any collateral or contract. Just the tacit understand that you keep your word. If by any chance, disaster has visited you, they may even consider delaying payment. And, if they consider you to be trustworthy after prolonged interaction, they may even the door for you and introduce you to other Chinese business people,
This practice among Chinese is not limited to just the wealthy among them, but even average storeowners. Again, these about Chinese obsevatins and perceptionsare based from personal experience and those of my family, as well as quite a number of the people I know in the community where I lived when I was young.
Such generosity I encountered also, when I was a student in Baltimore, and the places where I lived in other parts of the US.
If there is any lesson to be learned from this, we Americans should not make blanket assumptions about a country and a people, unless we really took the time to know them and their culture. It just shows the arrogance that go along with the ignorance among some of us.
And how ironic that your most likely lack of education and understanding of foreign cultures and economic state of other countries led you to make such blanket accusations.
"entire citizenry?" -- this reveals that you do not understand or lack a full grasp of the meaning of certain words. English is not my native tongue, so when I am in doubt, I go online. You may indeed learn a lesson, if you take the time to look up and understand the differences among the words -- some, few, many, majority, most, entire, everybody, anybody, etc. or even the correct usage of citizenry,
You may not be aware of this but we Americans owe many Chinese people, a great amount of money, And, they also own quite a bit of America, as well as other countries of the world. And so many of these Chinese may not even consider your standard of luxury and aesthetics tp be good enough for them. Not all the one billion of them but more than you ever have grasp from your understanding of other cultures and peoples of the world.
It is possible also that you might have missed many classes in math, or just too lazy intellectually to grasp the power of numbers. But, it is not too late.
Take the number one (1) billion [a number with nine zeros, after the "one"] and attach to that the term Chinese people in China (not in the entire world). Do the simple math of sequentially multiply with 1 percent to 10 percent.
That is the potential market that Apple understands could be tapped for its products, nothwithstanding the accusation by Apple haters that Apple products are overpriced.
Do you even read the papers or get online? Or even Apple Insider? If you do, and grasp them. Why do you think Apple in the US were investigated for "supposed discrimination" against Asians who were perceived to be too poor to afford Apple products? The reality is that "some", perhaps even "many" but not the "entire" Asian customers visiting the Apple stores in New York, New Jersey, and other large cities could afford Apple products. And yet, they visit Apple stores and buy them, sometimes two (I believe the imposed limit) and pay cash. I did not make this up, there were newspaper articles documenting this practice based from personal accounts. Quite a number of these Apple iPhone and iPad buyers actually claim that they could make a decent living doing that, earning $50-100 a day -- not bad for the homeless or unemployed. It beats asking for a dollar from pedestrians.
The same was observed in many stores in China where Apple products were sold, prompting Apple to close the store in Beijing(???) for a brief period during the recent iPad and iPhone introduction. These purchases do not even take into account, those purchased in Hongkongs, and in other metro areas in Asia.
The "profesional buyers" of Apple products are part of an unofficial market that attempt to quence the thirst of tens of thousands, if not millions soon who want to buy "authentic" Apple products.
Yes, rampant consumption is very much alive in China and other countries in Asia. And some have the extra money to spend for such luxury items. Many are even willing to pay premium price to be among the first to have such Apple products. Also, if you looked at the pictures of the customers of Apple stores in China, many of them are young people, most likely students and your usual aberage workers, but understand and appreciate the value of Apple products, not just as status symbol. More than likely, many of them do not belong to the upper 10% or let alone the upper 1% of the population.
Among the upper 1% it is not unusual that they give away for free last year's consumer products -- to their foreign domestic help -- to give room for the new products that they want to buy. The domestic helpers would then bring these giveaways to their home countries, like the Philippines and some other Asian countries. I should know this because my home country is in Asia where many Chinese live. I have not been to China myself but I have a number of relatives who either live, work or regularly visit China. I have also interacted with many Chinese since I was young.
One last thing, if a Chinese perceives you to be honest and responsible, (s)he will not hesitate to lend you money or goods, without any collateral or contract. Just the tacit understand that you keep your word. If by any chance, disaster has visited you, they may even consider delaying payment. And, if they consider you to be trustworthy after prolonged interaction, they may even the door for you and introduce you to other Chinese business people,
This practice among Chinese is not limited to just the wealthy among them, but even average storeowners. Again, these about Chinese obsevatins and perceptionsare based from personal experience and those of my family, as well as quite a number of the people I know in the community where I lived when I was young.
Such generosity I encountered also, when I was a student in Baltimore, and the places where I lived in other parts of the US.
If there is any lesson to be learned from this, we Americans should not make blanket assumptions about a country and a people, unless we really took the time to know them and their culture. It just shows the arrogance that go along with the ignorance among some of us.
CGC
Seriously, thank you for taking the time to write that - a very interesting perspective that I would hazard to guess anyone who has never travelled outside of the US would likely be familiar with.
I would like to add that we ned to keep in mind that there is precious little information about other nations and cultures available to the average person in the US - so our ignorance is generally not based on lack of intelligence but lack of available information. If you only watched the evening news on TV you might get the idea that that there are plane crashes and car wrecks and earthquakes etc every minute of every day (well, actually there might be somewhere but anyway) and forget that for something like 99% (wild guess there) of the time most people simply go through there day and no tragedy befalls them.
Likewise - it would seem that at least some folks (for example the presenters on Top Gear [love the show by the way]) who do not live in the US get the idea that ALL Americans are either obese or movie stars (hollywood or porn) and that ALL Americans drive either SUVs and V8 sedans or a Toyota Prius.
Just as it is easy to get the idea that ALL Chinese are listen to and watching pirated media - since our news outlets are by far more likely to run stories about a police seizure of 10,000 pirated copies of Lady Gaga's latest album then say for example a story about 10,000 Chinese citizens who worked hard to earn a living and chose to spend a few extra yuan to go to the store and BUY Lady Gaga's latest album (or buy it online).
Also consider that despite the phenomenal capacity of the human brain - it is very good at making generalizations - and when you feed your brain with only the highlights of what is going on in the world or the exceptions or the extraordinary cases - you end up with a skewed version of reality.
Or maybe it is just a maturity thing - and each of us has to reach our own point at which we become aware of the fact that rather than the world and everything in it being Black and White - that in reality it is all one continuous spectrum of every conceivable shade of gray.
Also interesting - I saw somewhere recently - that in many countries the educational system is very focussed on cramming as many facts as possible - which results in high test scores that test knowledge - but (at least in some case) there are schools in the US which focus more on things such as critical thinking - and when challenged which a test that requires more than just recollection of facts - the tables are turned in favor of the US students.
Not bragging or putting anyone down here - in fact I have been called a Facts Curator - but as far as I can tell (and have been told) I am not a one trick pony in that regard.
Figured I'd toss a few colloquial phrases in there so any non-native english speakers could have fun looking them up - since even something as simple as a german expression translated to english as "are you accusing me of having blue eyes?" might not seem to have any special meaning but it does have a specific meaning which I cannot figure how it came to be - then again some expressions have gone through so many permutations and alterations of use that they are rather far removed from the original use case.
Oh yeah - Apple iPad - that's what we ere talking about - maybe I will win one.
Note that Mr. Yang and the Taiwanese company do not actually control the assets of their Shenzhen "affiliate." I would assume that one of those assets is, in fact, the iPad trademarks in China that are in question.
So I would think it would be the consortium of Chinese banks that should sue or (more likely) seek to sell the trademarks to Apple. Assuming, of course that somehow the basic claim -- that the deal for Proview's global trademarks did not include those held by an affiliate in mainland China -- stands up to scrutiny.
Ridiculous, desperate lawsuit intended as a hail mary to save a dying company. How one sells a "global trademark" and then claims it doesn't include the most populous nation on Earth is beyond me.
Apple can just drag out a lawsuit. If they're already $400 mil in the hole and can't win a substantial amount in a lawsuit, they'll be gone in no time
If they have a decent chance in the lawsuit, somebody will finance their costs. Indeed, the claim seems to be their major asset. In this country, financiers for debtors in possession have priority in a bankruptcy setting.
I think I'm going to go trademark every english language word and put an i in front of them. Then I can sell global rights but then turn around and say I kept it for this certain country only. Makes a lot of sense.
How ironic that a Chinese company is suing a US company for alleged Intellectual Property violation/theft when their entire citizenry has no regard for US IP rights when it comes to movies, music, books, etc.
If I missed it in the article, I apologize, but does this company actually have a damned product associated with their precious trademark? Or are they just trolling?
In the US, one need not have a product in commerce in order to reserve a trademark. I don't know what the law is in China.
Indeed, there is no information whatsoever on the ins and outs of foreign companies using/buying/selling/reserving/suing for trademarks in the PRC. There is no information whatsoever on Chinese trademark law in general.
I don't think any of us are in any position to have much of an opinion on the merits of the situation.
I'm sure that, like a lot of contracts, there's a lot of weasel wording that invites misinterpretation while trying to screw the opposite signatory. You know, sell you the illusion of a thing without actually letting you have that thing. Hopefully, in this case, Apple's lawyers will be on the right side of this.
Wait. Are you hoping that Apple's Lawyers put in "lot of weasel wording that invites misinterpretation while trying to screw the opposite signatory"?
That's just sleazy. I imagine that Apple's lawyers instead worked for clarity, clearly setting forth the deal in unambiguous language.
That is what skilled lawyers do. Tricking the other side invites lawsuits.
How can you have a global trademark and exclude one country -- by definition it is then NOT global.
Yep. That much is clear.
So I suspect that we don't know lots of relevant facts, because as reported, the entire situation turns on the definition of one adjective, which is just plain unlikely.
To me it looks like this company is just pissed that they got taken to the bank on this one.
Some no name company comes to them and buys the right to the trade name, they did not license it they bought it in its entirety (maybe not China, which I find interesting in itself) fro a mere $55k. At the time they were probable think wow that was a lot of money to make on the name they fail to capitalize on. Only to find out in reality they sold it to Apple on the cheep since Apple probably would have paid millions for the name.
This company did not think it through, buy saying who on earth would be interested in the iPad name, let me think who is using "i' in all its product names oh yeah apple they would pay millions for the rights.
Just a bunch of idiot who now look foolish and trying to extract revenge
"entire citizenry?" -- this reveals that you do not understand or lack a full grasp of the meaning of certain words. English is not my native tongue, so when I am in doubt, I go online. You may indeed learn a lesson, if you take the time to look up and understand the differences among the words -- some, few, many, majority, most, entire, everybody, anybody, etc. or even the correct usage of citizenry,
CGC
Naw. he knows the difference. It is not a matter of definitions.
Instead, it is likely a defective manner of thinking.
Here's a little from Wikipedia about the phenomenon:
"... dysfunctional thinking, behavior, and emotional responses. This involves..... testing the assumptions which one makes and identifying how certain of one's usually-unquestioned thoughts are distorted, unrealistic and unhelpful. .... developed a list of "errors" in thinking .... including arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, over-generalization, and magnification (of negatives) and minimization (of positives)."
I think the remark was a mere expression of "usually-unquestioned thoughts [that] are distorted, unrealistic and unhelpful."
It is very common, but does not lead to reliable conclusions.
Comments
How ironic that a Chinese company is suing a US company for alleged Intellectual Property violation/theft when their entire citizenry has no regard for US IP rights when it comes to movies, music, books, etc.
And how ironic that your most likely lack of education and understanding of foreign cultures and economic state of other countries led you to make such blanket accusations.
"entire citizenry?" -- this reveals that you do not understand or lack a full grasp of the meaning of certain words. English is not my native tongue, so when I am in doubt, I go online. You may indeed learn a lesson, if you take the time to look up and understand the differences among the words -- some, few, many, majority, most, entire, everybody, anybody, etc. or even the correct usage of citizenry,
You may not be aware of this but we Americans owe many Chinese people, a great amount of money, And, they also own quite a bit of America, as well as other countries of the world. And so many of these Chinese may not even consider your standard of luxury and aesthetics tp be good enough for them. Not all the one billion of them but more than you ever have grasp from your understanding of other cultures and peoples of the world.
It is possible also that you might have missed many classes in math, or just too lazy intellectually to grasp the power of numbers. But, it is not too late.
Take the number one (1) billion [a number with nine zeros, after the "one"] and attach to that the term Chinese people in China (not in the entire world). Do the simple math of sequentially multiply with 1 percent to 10 percent.
That is the potential market that Apple understands could be tapped for its products, nothwithstanding the accusation by Apple haters that Apple products are overpriced.
Do you even read the papers or get online? Or even Apple Insider? If you do, and grasp them. Why do you think Apple in the US were investigated for "supposed discrimination" against Asians who were perceived to be too poor to afford Apple products? The reality is that "some", perhaps even "many" but not the "entire" Asian customers visiting the Apple stores in New York, New Jersey, and other large cities could afford Apple products. And yet, they visit Apple stores and buy them, sometimes two (I believe the imposed limit) and pay cash. I did not make this up, there were newspaper articles documenting this practice based from personal accounts. Quite a number of these Apple iPhone and iPad buyers actually claim that they could make a decent living doing that, earning $50-100 a day -- not bad for the homeless or unemployed. It beats asking for a dollar from pedestrians.
The same was observed in many stores in China where Apple products were sold, prompting Apple to close the store in Beijing(???) for a brief period during the recent iPad and iPhone introduction. These purchases do not even take into account, those purchased in Hongkongs, and in other metro areas in Asia.
The "profesional buyers" of Apple products are part of an unofficial market that attempt to quence the thirst of tens of thousands, if not millions soon who want to buy "authentic" Apple products.
Yes, rampant consumption is very much alive in China and other countries in Asia. And some have the extra money to spend for such luxury items. Many are even willing to pay premium price to be among the first to have such Apple products. Also, if you looked at the pictures of the customers of Apple stores in China, many of them are young people, most likely students and your usual aberage workers, but understand and appreciate the value of Apple products, not just as status symbol. More than likely, many of them do not belong to the upper 10% or let alone the upper 1% of the population.
Among the upper 1% it is not unusual that they give away for free last year's consumer products -- to their foreign domestic help -- to give room for the new products that they want to buy. The domestic helpers would then bring these giveaways to their home countries, like the Philippines and some other Asian countries. I should know this because my home country is in Asia where many Chinese live. I have not been to China myself but I have a number of relatives who either live, work or regularly visit China. I have also interacted with many Chinese since I was young.
One last thing, if a Chinese perceives you to be honest and responsible, (s)he will not hesitate to lend you money or goods, without any collateral or contract. Just the tacit understand that you keep your word. If by any chance, disaster has visited you, they may even consider delaying payment. And, if they consider you to be trustworthy after prolonged interaction, they may even the door for you and introduce you to other Chinese business people,
This practice among Chinese is not limited to just the wealthy among them, but even average storeowners. Again, these about Chinese obsevatins and perceptionsare based from personal experience and those of my family, as well as quite a number of the people I know in the community where I lived when I was young.
Such generosity I encountered also, when I was a student in Baltimore, and the places where I lived in other parts of the US.
If there is any lesson to be learned from this, we Americans should not make blanket assumptions about a country and a people, unless we really took the time to know them and their culture. It just shows the arrogance that go along with the ignorance among some of us.
CGC
And how ironic that your most likely lack of education and understanding of foreign cultures and economic state of other countries led you to make such blanket accusations.
"entire citizenry?" -- this reveals that you do not understand or lack a full grasp of the meaning of certain words. English is not my native tongue, so when I am in doubt, I go online. You may indeed learn a lesson, if you take the time to look up and understand the differences among the words -- some, few, many, majority, most, entire, everybody, anybody, etc. or even the correct usage of citizenry,
You may not be aware of this but we Americans owe many Chinese people, a great amount of money, And, they also own quite a bit of America, as well as other countries of the world. And so many of these Chinese may not even consider your standard of luxury and aesthetics tp be good enough for them. Not all the one billion of them but more than you ever have grasp from your understanding of other cultures and peoples of the world.
It is possible also that you might have missed many classes in math, or just too lazy intellectually to grasp the power of numbers. But, it is not too late.
Take the number one (1) billion [a number with nine zeros, after the "one"] and attach to that the term Chinese people in China (not in the entire world). Do the simple math of sequentially multiply with 1 percent to 10 percent.
That is the potential market that Apple understands could be tapped for its products, nothwithstanding the accusation by Apple haters that Apple products are overpriced.
Do you even read the papers or get online? Or even Apple Insider? If you do, and grasp them. Why do you think Apple in the US were investigated for "supposed discrimination" against Asians who were perceived to be too poor to afford Apple products? The reality is that "some", perhaps even "many" but not the "entire" Asian customers visiting the Apple stores in New York, New Jersey, and other large cities could afford Apple products. And yet, they visit Apple stores and buy them, sometimes two (I believe the imposed limit) and pay cash. I did not make this up, there were newspaper articles documenting this practice based from personal accounts. Quite a number of these Apple iPhone and iPad buyers actually claim that they could make a decent living doing that, earning $50-100 a day -- not bad for the homeless or unemployed. It beats asking for a dollar from pedestrians.
The same was observed in many stores in China where Apple products were sold, prompting Apple to close the store in Beijing(???) for a brief period during the recent iPad and iPhone introduction. These purchases do not even take into account, those purchased in Hongkongs, and in other metro areas in Asia.
The "profesional buyers" of Apple products are part of an unofficial market that attempt to quence the thirst of tens of thousands, if not millions soon who want to buy "authentic" Apple products.
Yes, rampant consumption is very much alive in China and other countries in Asia. And some have the extra money to spend for such luxury items. Many are even willing to pay premium price to be among the first to have such Apple products. Also, if you looked at the pictures of the customers of Apple stores in China, many of them are young people, most likely students and your usual aberage workers, but understand and appreciate the value of Apple products, not just as status symbol. More than likely, many of them do not belong to the upper 10% or let alone the upper 1% of the population.
Among the upper 1% it is not unusual that they give away for free last year's consumer products -- to their foreign domestic help -- to give room for the new products that they want to buy. The domestic helpers would then bring these giveaways to their home countries, like the Philippines and some other Asian countries. I should know this because my home country is in Asia where many Chinese live. I have not been to China myself but I have a number of relatives who either live, work or regularly visit China. I have also interacted with many Chinese since I was young.
One last thing, if a Chinese perceives you to be honest and responsible, (s)he will not hesitate to lend you money or goods, without any collateral or contract. Just the tacit understand that you keep your word. If by any chance, disaster has visited you, they may even consider delaying payment. And, if they consider you to be trustworthy after prolonged interaction, they may even the door for you and introduce you to other Chinese business people,
This practice among Chinese is not limited to just the wealthy among them, but even average storeowners. Again, these about Chinese obsevatins and perceptionsare based from personal experience and those of my family, as well as quite a number of the people I know in the community where I lived when I was young.
Such generosity I encountered also, when I was a student in Baltimore, and the places where I lived in other parts of the US.
If there is any lesson to be learned from this, we Americans should not make blanket assumptions about a country and a people, unless we really took the time to know them and their culture. It just shows the arrogance that go along with the ignorance among some of us.
CGC
Seriously, thank you for taking the time to write that - a very interesting perspective that I would hazard to guess anyone who has never travelled outside of the US would likely be familiar with.
I would like to add that we ned to keep in mind that there is precious little information about other nations and cultures available to the average person in the US - so our ignorance is generally not based on lack of intelligence but lack of available information. If you only watched the evening news on TV you might get the idea that that there are plane crashes and car wrecks and earthquakes etc every minute of every day (well, actually there might be somewhere but anyway) and forget that for something like 99% (wild guess there) of the time most people simply go through there day and no tragedy befalls them.
Likewise - it would seem that at least some folks (for example the presenters on Top Gear [love the show by the way]) who do not live in the US get the idea that ALL Americans are either obese or movie stars (hollywood or porn) and that ALL Americans drive either SUVs and V8 sedans or a Toyota Prius.
Just as it is easy to get the idea that ALL Chinese are listen to and watching pirated media - since our news outlets are by far more likely to run stories about a police seizure of 10,000 pirated copies of Lady Gaga's latest album then say for example a story about 10,000 Chinese citizens who worked hard to earn a living and chose to spend a few extra yuan to go to the store and BUY Lady Gaga's latest album (or buy it online).
Also consider that despite the phenomenal capacity of the human brain - it is very good at making generalizations - and when you feed your brain with only the highlights of what is going on in the world or the exceptions or the extraordinary cases - you end up with a skewed version of reality.
Or maybe it is just a maturity thing - and each of us has to reach our own point at which we become aware of the fact that rather than the world and everything in it being Black and White - that in reality it is all one continuous spectrum of every conceivable shade of gray.
Also interesting - I saw somewhere recently - that in many countries the educational system is very focussed on cramming as many facts as possible - which results in high test scores that test knowledge - but (at least in some case) there are schools in the US which focus more on things such as critical thinking - and when challenged which a test that requires more than just recollection of facts - the tables are turned in favor of the US students.
Not bragging or putting anyone down here - in fact I have been called a Facts Curator - but as far as I can tell (and have been told) I am not a one trick pony in that regard.
Figured I'd toss a few colloquial phrases in there so any non-native english speakers could have fun looking them up - since even something as simple as a german expression translated to english as "are you accusing me of having blue eyes?" might not seem to have any special meaning but it does have a specific meaning which I cannot figure how it came to be - then again some expressions have gone through so many permutations and alterations of use that they are rather far removed from the original use case.
Oh yeah - Apple iPad - that's what we ere talking about - maybe I will win one.
I thought they did have an alternate name for at least one product, but I've already forgotten what it was.
I know of one for sure, because I own it. It's called the AirMac (Airport is registered to IO-Data in Japan.)
So I would think it would be the consortium of Chinese banks that should sue or (more likely) seek to sell the trademarks to Apple. Assuming, of course that somehow the basic claim -- that the deal for Proview's global trademarks did not include those held by an affiliate in mainland China -- stands up to scrutiny.
They'll never do that. Very un-apple like. Brand recognition and all that.
AirPort is called AirMac in Japan because the name was already taken. Never say never.
Apple can just drag out a lawsuit. If they're already $400 mil in the hole and can't win a substantial amount in a lawsuit, they'll be gone in no time
Only problem with that is someone else will be given the trademark and then they can sue apple.
Apple can just drag out a lawsuit. If they're already $400 mil in the hole and can't win a substantial amount in a lawsuit, they'll be gone in no time
If they have a decent chance in the lawsuit, somebody will finance their costs. Indeed, the claim seems to be their major asset. In this country, financiers for debtors in possession have priority in a bankruptcy setting.
How is it that they could sue for damages in the US if they don't have the trademark globally?
Likely some sort of international treaty. Apple is based in the US.
How ironic that a Chinese company is suing a US company for alleged Intellectual Property violation/theft when their entire citizenry has no regard for US IP rights when it comes to movies, music, books, etc.
Taiwan is ROC, not PRC.
That's a contradiction in terms.
This is dead before it started.
We have no idea what the contract said. You are treating a blog story like it has enough relevant fact for you to make close legal determinations.
How was the term "Worldwide" defined in the contract? Were there other clauses which support the contention that China was not included?
I doubt very much that the case turns on the definition of a single adjective, despite what this blog summary seems to indicate.
If I missed it in the article, I apologize, but does this company actually have a damned product associated with their precious trademark? Or are they just trolling?
In the US, one need not have a product in commerce in order to reserve a trademark. I don't know what the law is in China.
Indeed, there is no information whatsoever on the ins and outs of foreign companies using/buying/selling/reserving/suing for trademarks in the PRC. There is no information whatsoever on Chinese trademark law in general.
I don't think any of us are in any position to have much of an opinion on the merits of the situation.
I love the part about "[sold] the iPad trademark to a company called IP Application Development"... It's like taking candy from a baby...
Are you saying that Apple is like somebody who steals from little kids? A thief? WTF?
I'm sure that, like a lot of contracts, there's a lot of weasel wording that invites misinterpretation while trying to screw the opposite signatory. You know, sell you the illusion of a thing without actually letting you have that thing. Hopefully, in this case, Apple's lawyers will be on the right side of this.
Wait. Are you hoping that Apple's Lawyers put in "lot of weasel wording that invites misinterpretation while trying to screw the opposite signatory"?
That's just sleazy. I imagine that Apple's lawyers instead worked for clarity, clearly setting forth the deal in unambiguous language.
That is what skilled lawyers do. Tricking the other side invites lawsuits.
How can you have a global trademark and exclude one country -- by definition it is then NOT global.
Yep. That much is clear.
So I suspect that we don't know lots of relevant facts, because as reported, the entire situation turns on the definition of one adjective, which is just plain unlikely.
Some no name company comes to them and buys the right to the trade name, they did not license it they bought it in its entirety (maybe not China, which I find interesting in itself) fro a mere $55k. At the time they were probable think wow that was a lot of money to make on the name they fail to capitalize on. Only to find out in reality they sold it to Apple on the cheep since Apple probably would have paid millions for the name.
This company did not think it through, buy saying who on earth would be interested in the iPad name, let me think who is using "i' in all its product names oh yeah apple they would pay millions for the rights.
Just a bunch of idiot who now look foolish and trying to extract revenge
"entire citizenry?" -- this reveals that you do not understand or lack a full grasp of the meaning of certain words. English is not my native tongue, so when I am in doubt, I go online. You may indeed learn a lesson, if you take the time to look up and understand the differences among the words -- some, few, many, majority, most, entire, everybody, anybody, etc. or even the correct usage of citizenry,
CGC
Naw. he knows the difference. It is not a matter of definitions.
Instead, it is likely a defective manner of thinking.
Here's a little from Wikipedia about the phenomenon:
"... dysfunctional thinking, behavior, and emotional responses. This involves..... testing the assumptions which one makes and identifying how certain of one's usually-unquestioned thoughts are distorted, unrealistic and unhelpful. .... developed a list of "errors" in thinking .... including arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, over-generalization, and magnification (of negatives) and minimization (of positives)."
I think the remark was a mere expression of "usually-unquestioned thoughts [that] are distorted, unrealistic and unhelpful."
It is very common, but does not lead to reliable conclusions.