Beijing (dpa) – A Shanghai court on Wednesday began hearing a petition to ban Apple Inc from selling iPads in the city filed by a Chinese company that claims it still owns the iPad trademark for China. Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Proview International Holdings, asked the court in Shanghai's Pudong district to order Apple to stop selling iPads, the latest in a string of court cases brought by the Chinese firm. Several online retailers and electronics stores have already suspended sales of iPads after earlier rulings in favor of Proview by courts in the southern province of Guangdong, where the Chinese company is based. State media said local government business regulators in about 20 cities and provinces were seizing iPads to prevent their sales at electronics stores and markets. Proview said it registered the iPad trademark in China in 2001, but the state-run newspaper China Daily earlier said Proview Technolgy (Taiwan) sold the international rights to the trademark to a British firm in 2009. The British firm reportedly resold the trademark to Apple, which launched the iPad in 2010, but Proview insisted that it still held the trademark in China. Apple accused Proview of reneging on an agreement to transfer the trademark. “We bought Proview's worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago,” Apple said in a statement last week. “Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China, and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter,” it said. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/5zqO8 Tags: Apple, China, Court, iPad Section: East Asia, Latest News, Tech
