Image via MicGadget
After recently settling with Proviewover the iPad trademark dispute for nearly $60 million, Apple faces yet another trademark lawsuit from a Chinese company. The company, Jiangsu Xuebao, registered the trademark for the word Chinese translation of Snow Leopard, Xuebao (雪豹), back in 2000 for its electrical equipment production(interesting enough 2000 was the same year Proview filed the trademark for IPAD). Jiangsu Xuebao is claiming that Apple has violated their trademark with Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
A court in Shanghai has already accepted the case and has set a court date of July 10. Jiangsu Xuebao has already handed in 104 piece of evidence and are apparently seeking nearly $80,000 in compensation fees and an official apology from Apple. According to Mic Gadget, a Chinese lawyer has already stated that he doesn’t believe that Apple will lose this case since they didn’t use the Chinese word “Xuebao” on their official Chinese website when selling Snow Leopard. Jiangsu Xuebao has two products, the Xuebao touchscreen ad display” and “Xuebao mobile EPR software,” that he believes Apple has violated the trademark of.
The company is also suing several other companies that sell Snow Leopard. The CEO of Jiangsu Xuebao has also added to his argument that Apple tried to register Xuebao (雪豹) back in 2008, but was rejected by the Chinese trademark office. He believe that this was due to his company already owning the rights to the word and thus violated the rights to the company’s trademark. What do you think?