I think not able to use iPad name in China can be a good lesson for Apple. Just because Apple thinks their product names are so popular around most of the world, Apple does not own the market as they like to believe.

How many smaller products out there happened to already own the product name earlier by chance and then muscle out from able to use the name because some bigger company decided they have more rights to take over the product name?

China got lucky that someone already took iPad name. Apple is like any other brand, live with it and change their product name.

Didn't Apple successfully asked some countries to slap an export ban on Samsung for having a smartphone looking TOO SIMILAR to their own iPhone?

Well, Proview's iPad looks like one of Apple own products but its asking for an export ban for Apple's iPad since the name is already taken.

Wow. Poetic(?).

You have a good point there Patriot_Pride. These IT giants are gobbling up patents and smaller companies so they monopolize the market and sue smaller would be competitors.

I'm sure Chinese companies are doing the exact opposite of what these Western companies : patenting names of possible devices that those Western companies might be using them in the future and when they do : BAM! Sue them. Why waste money buying patents and companies when it's cheaper to register a name that no one uses and lay in wait for some big Western company to pick it up along the line.

i think this one needed to be discussed:

Here's where things get murky. According to Chinese news source Sina, Proview Shenzhen went broke in Aug. 2010. The Bank of China is now apparently one of 9 companies that own Proview—meaning it's owned by the Chinese government. Apple, it seems, is going up against more than a small bankrupt company. It's going up against China.

funny how things work huh...

is karma for them sueing samsung and kodak