A local court denied a motion to surpress the sale of the iPad in Shanghai due to a similar ongoing case in the Guangdong Province, allowing Apple stores to continue selling the product until an outcome is decided. Facing the unpredictability of Chinese courts, this is finally a glimmer of hope for the tech giant. Although this has no bearing on how the Guangdong case will turn out, it shows that China is in support of Apple continuing with sales probably due to some political pressure.
“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.” The U.S. technology company insists that one of its subsidiaries acquired the rights to the iPad name in China from the Chinese company several years ago, before the tablet computer was released.
But the Proview parent company, a computer display maker based in Taiwan, says its subsidiary in Shenzhen, which is in Guangdong Province, retains the rights to the iPad name in the mainland. Proview is facing bankruptcy and has said it is trying to force Apple to pay some compensation.
