Hopefully some of Apple’s recent China iPhone sales and supply chain woes will be put to rest soon, as Monday’s reports from Bejing are that the country is finally ready to crack down on malicious trademark registrations.
China is no stranger to the controversy that has surrounded this issue for years—the country has been repeatedly urged by the international community to take a stronger stand on intellectual property rights violations on a number of products to include intellectual properties from industries as varies as tech, entertainment and pharmaceuticals to include several Apple Inc. properties.
The move comes after sports legend Michael Jordan filed a February lawsuit against Qiaodan sports—a firm that built its entire brand image off of Jordan’s former jersey number of 23 and the Chinese translation of the name “Michael.”
The proposed amendment is purported to give more power to trademark holders, allowing them to ban unauthorized uses of logos, names or similar names. The proposed changes to existing law this amendment will address may show a willingness on China’s part to become a legitimate player on the world stage—expanding potential markets there further.
As details as per the country’s plan to action on this issue are not yet clear, there’s no telling how this call to action will affect sales of the iPhone 5 in Chinese markets. The Chinese legislature, which will discuss the measure next week, is often seen to play nothing more than a rubber stamp role in the creation of Chinese law. But seeing as Apple has already paid out $60 million to Proview Technology in July for infringement on use of the iPad trademark, and the suit hampered and delayed sales in the expanding and burgeoning market, real attention to trademark issues may make for better profit margins in the future. Whether China is actually interested, however, remains to be seen.
In other news pertaining to Apple and intellectual property, a rare decision to allow transgression of its former provisions for MFi licensing of Lightning specification has been granted to a Kickstarter project which will combine both old 30-pin and Lighting adapter and charger technologies. As Apple generally licenses the technologies for free, but is generally cautious about how they will allow them to be used to ensure quality control, this move is rare. But an Apple representative also noted they’ve updated their own use to allow the combination of these technologies as well in other accessories in an interview from CNET.
Updating guidelines to allow the use of older accessories will allow the creators of POP to continue on with its project, which received $139,170 in crowd sourced funding, but had offered to issue refunds in wake of being unable to develop it within Apple’s former guidelines.
Rumors are also circulating that the coming fifth generation of full-sized iPads will take after their smaller cousins—being thinner and lighter, taking after the iPad Mini’s design cues. Speculation is also that it will have retina display. The move would absolutely kill the recently released fourth generation iPad if this proposed version comes only 5 months after it.
The source of this rumor, however, is known to not have a high rate of calling Apple’s next move accurately—so any news as to this development should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
