“A local court has rejected an effort by a Chinese company to stop Apple from selling its popular iPad here amid a trademark dispute over who owns the rights to the iPad name,” David Barboza reports for The New York Times. “The Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court released a statement on its Web site Thursday saying that it would not rule because a related trademark court case between the two companies was pending in Guangdong Province, in southern China.”
“An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the court decision and said the company would continue to challenge the position of the Chinese company, Proview International, which claims to own the trademark rights to the iPad name in mainland China,” Barboza reports. “‘Proview’s injunction request was rejected,’ Carolyn Wu, the Apple spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview Thursday. ‘The court granted Apple’s request to suspend the case.’ Apple insists that one of its subsidiaries acquired the rights to the iPad name in China from the Chinese company several years before the tablet computer was released.”
Barboza reports, “Shanghai was the Chinese company’s first major test of whether it could disrupt Apple’s selling apparatus in China.”
