Fresh from having paid Proview $60 million for the Mainland rights to the iPad trademark Apple has been hit with another suit. It is murmured that they played hardball with Proview exactly to make sure that others didn?t think they were an easy mark. Might not have worked:
Jiangsu Snow Leopard Household Chemical (http://www.xuebao.com.cn) recently filed suit against Apple in the Shanghai Pudong District People?s Court, alleging that the name of version 10.6 of the Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, infringes upon its trademark. Snow Leopard Household Chemical is demanding that Apple cease its infringing behavior, issue a public apology, and pay RMB 500,000 in damages. The court has accepted the case and will hear arguments in open court on July 10.
At that sort of claim for damages it might well be simpler just to pay rather than employ lawyers. But that might well open the floodgates. For if a toothpaste manufacturer can claim trademark on an operating system then just about anything can happen.
On the one side they do claim to have registered the Snow Leopard name for electronics products. On the other hand, they only registered it in Chinese characters, or in pinyin, and not in English. And Apple has only used the full English ?Snow Leopard?. So it isn?t entirely certain that they really will have to pay.
Of course, this is all a problem disappearing in the rear view mirror as the very name is two OS updates ancient already. So it?s a trivial matter of significance only in what it signifies about who else might come after Apple, not for the amount that is being claimed now.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/07/04/apples-next-trademark-problem-in-china/
shannon de lima joe torre west virginia university michele bachmann jessica biel tim howard west virginia
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