The patent court in Shenzen, China ruled in favour of Proview Technology, who had previously trademarked the name 'iPad' in 2000. Proview sued Apple for 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) in October for copyright infringement; likely spurred by its 400 million yuan ($64 million) debt.
Apple had purchased rights to the trademark from Proview's global parent company last year. But the Chinese judiciary clearly did not share the same sentiments.
It has been suggested that Chinese patent law is deliberately designed to favour Chinese based companies, in efforts to proect Chinese intellectual property. This has resulted in Chinese versions of Western brands being protected by patent law, such as Weibo in place of Twitter, and Baidu in place of Google.
China is currently the world's largest smartphone market, after overtaking the U.S. earlier this year. For Apple, not being able to use one of its universally synonymous brand names will be an unfortunate blow to the company.
Apple did not comment on the ruling.
One question Apple faces is whether it will buy the rights from Proview once more? Or, if the case is upheld, will Apple choose to market the iPad under a different name?
