Proview, current owner of the iPad trademark in China, now says it will sue Apple in the U.S. Ha!

I think the Proview legal team needs to take a deep breath here. They are going with the old strategy of “Let’s throw as much shit against the wall as possible and see what sticks.” That often works quite well in beating an opponent so badly that they will limp to the negotiation table.

However, I’ve always thought that the strategy made the most sense when the threats were somewhat realistic, as opposed to fantastic.

Unless there’s a smoking gun somewhere, this is just short of fantasy:

A trademark dispute in China over the iPad could spill over into U.S courts, after a little-known Chinese company threatened on Friday to sue Apple in the U.S. for among other things allegedly setting up a “fake company” to purchase the rights to the trademark.

Remember that Apple used an intermediary company to make the deal with Proview in 2009, which has since gone sour. Why? Multinationals don’t do this sort of thing using their own name; it tends to drive up the price substantially.

Using a dummy company is standard practice in the IP biz, and I’ve never heard of anyone being sued because of it.

What’s the threat here, a fraud suit? For that, you need a material misrepresentation of fact that led to damages to Proview.

Even if we were to stipulate that Apple’s failure to tell Proview that they were behind the dummy company was a misrepresentation (a very big “if”), was it material? And how did Proview suffer because of it?

Proview’s only arguments are that: 1) if they had known it was Apple, they would have asked a higher price; and 2) if they had known it was Apple, they would not have done the deal at all since Apple is somehow a competitor.

As to #1, even if that helps their case (I doubt it), does Proview really want to admit that Apple’s subterfuge prevented it from charging an unreasonable price? A very odd strategy that would be.

As to #2, Proview tried to sell a product called the iPad many years ago, long before the 2009 deal. At that point, there was zero competition between the parties. I suppose that Proview could talk up its bright prospects for the future, but this is rather pathetic and unrealistic given its current financial status.

Also, since Proview never actually transferred the China mark, all of this talk about damages and competition must be restricted to those other jurisdictions that were part of the deal, not China. I have a feeling that makes this case even more ridiculous.

If I’m an Apple lawyer, this threat goes way down on the list of things to worry about. I’m sure Proview could file this in the U.S. somewhere and make some headlines, but it sure seems like a loser lawsuit brought up for mischief making purposes only.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apple, ipad, proview, trademark infringement