Sellers in a small city in the Guangdong province forced to withdraw tablets from sale

Feb 20, 2012 15:36 GMT  ·  By

A Chinese court has ruled that iPad distributors in Huizhou, a small city in the Guangdong province, must stop sales of the Apple tablet computer, as a result of Apple infringing upon a trademark held by a local company called Proview Technology.

Proview has filed not one, but multiple lawsuits against Apple in the country and is seeking to ban sales of the iPad, whose name infringes a Proview trademark, in 40 Chinese cities.

Apple said in a statement that its case is still pending in mainland China, and has already appealed to Guangdong's High Court against an earlier ruling that also favored Proview. Apple continues to uphold that it holds the trademark rights to the iPad name in China:

"We bought Proview's worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago. Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter," said Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu.