Apple paid $55,000 to use the iPad name in a number of countries, but a Chinese court ruled in December that China wasn’t one of them, leaving Apple to pay up $60 million this time for the right.
Apple has agreed to pay Shenzhen Proview
Technology $60 million to use the iPad name in China, the Associated
Press reported July 2. The matter appears to settle an ongoing lawsuit
between the two companies about which one really owns the name iPad.
Apple has maintained that it purchased the
global rights to the iPad name in 2009, but in December, a Chinese court ruled
that it hadnt purchased the name for use in China.
In question, said the AP report, was
whether Apple acquired the iPad name in China when it bought rights in various
countries from a Proview affiliate in Taiwan for 35,000 British pounds
($55,000). The December court ruling said Proview, which registered the iPad
trademark in China in 2001, was not bound by that sale, even though it was part
of the same company.
Proview, which is financially troubled and
may still need to file bankruptcy, was seeking as much as $400 million, said
the report. It added that Shenzhen Proview Technology is a subsidiary of
Proview International Holdings, an LCD screen maker, and that both companies
are under the control of a business man Yang Long-san, who refused to take
steps required to transfer the name under the agreement. A Hong Kong judge
ruled that Yang had the companies acting together with the common intention of
injuring Apple, but as Hong Kong has its own legal system, the ruling was of
little help to Apple.
Ultimately, the fee of $60 million was
negotiated.
Apple can now begin the process of selling
its third-generation iPad in China, which has become its second-largest sales
market behind the United States. During the first quarter of 2012, China also
became the
worlds largest market for smartphone sales. While U.S. shipments rose 5
percent year-over-year, the Asia-Pacific region saw an 81 percent growth, with
China responsible for 22 percent of the quarters shipments.
The iPhone trademark also didnt come
simplyor inexpensivelyfor Apple. In January 2007 Cisco
Systems sued Apple for patent infringement, saying Apple approached Cisco about
acquiring the right to use the name, but when the pair couldnt agree, went
ahead and used it anyway. Cisco acquired the name when it purchased Infogear,
which had introduced a line of desktop iPhones in 2006. Cisco and Apple
ultimately settled on an undisclosed amount.
The story of how Apple came to the iMac name
is a much more pleasant one. As ad man Ken Segall tells in his book Insanely
Simple: The Obsession that Drives Apples Success, Steve Jobs developed
a revolutionary, see-through, colorful desktop that he was counting on to save
a then-struggling Apple. Segall and his team had helped to develop the Think Different
campaign, and in the spring of 1998 they were summoned to Cupertino, Calif.,
for a look at what thinking differently could lead to. Jobs said he already had
a great name for the machine but had called the ad team in to see if they could
beat it. He wanted to call it: MacMan.
The agency team was heartbroken to learn
that Steve had fallen in love with such a disappointing name as MacMan. ¦
there could be no love for MacMan. Ever. It had so many things wrong with it,
we didnt know where to start, wrote Segall.
Jobs gave the team a list of requirements a
new name must meet, and a week later they returned to present their top five
ideas; their favorite was iMac. Jobs hated it. A week later, the team returned
with more ideas, keeping iMac on the list. Jobs still hated it, but slightly
less than the week before. The team went home dejected. The next day, Segall
learned that Jobs had been calling around, asking people what they thoughts of
the name iMac. He also had it silk-screened onto a model device to see how it
looked.
I never heard another peep about this
decision, wrote Segal. Steve basically took it and ran. Obviously, he liked
what he saw when he got the model back, and he must have received positive
reactions from his inner circle. And so, iMac it was.
Follow Michelle Maisto on
Twitter.
Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.
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