The affiliate marketing industry is already being burned by BS intellectual property law suits in the form of Essociate’s patented claim to have invented affiliate network technology, but in this week’s ridiculous I.P. news we hear that Apple is likely to have to pay $1 billion to obtain the "iPad" trademark in China.
The backstory is that Apple bought the iPad "global trademark" a few years ago from a British company that specializes in I.P. monetization, who had in turn bought it from Proview, a Chinese company that had registered the name as far back as 2000. The only problem is that the British company didn’t own the trademark for China, so the "global" trademark didn’t include it. Now, Proview has won a court ruling in China confirming its ownership of the trademark in China and they are suing Apple for $1 billion-plus.
Once again, as we have seen in the Essociate dispute and in numerous domain-squatting situations, this is an example of a company that adds zero value acting as a leech on a creative, innovative company. This doesn’t serve anyone well, except the leeches.