Now that Apple has paid $60 million to end a thuggish extortion attempt on the part of China’s Proview over the iPad trademark, it looks like at least one additional Chinese trademark troll is coming out of the woodwork, looking for a payday. This time, however, it’s a dispute over a product Apple doesn’t even sell anymore: OS X Snow Leopard.
A court in Shanghai has just agreed to hear a trademark lawsuit case on July 10th filed by Chinese chemical company, Jiangsu Xuebao. At stake is the Snow Leopard trademark, which Jiangsue Xuebao has owned for the last ten years and used to market a line of gadgets.
According to Jiangsu Xuebao, Apple’s use of Snow Leopard for the name of its operating system is a violation of their trademark, and they want over $80,000 in damages, as well as an official apology from Apple. And they’re not stopping there: they’re also suing Chinese companies who have advertised or sold Snow Leopard to customers.
Even if Jiangsu Xuebao does own the trademark for Snow Leopard in China, experts seem to think that the Chinese chemical company’s chances at victory here are pretty low. Not only Apple can afford to put up a fight, but Jiagnsu Xuebao is a company better known for making toothpaste and toilet cleaning chemicals than operating systems. How much confusion could there really be?
Source: MIC Gadget
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
