Rights fight part of business

Apple's problems in the Chinese mainland over the use of the iPad trademark and retired NBA star Michael Jordan's legal action against Qiaodan Sports over its use of the Chinese equivalent of his name - Qiaodan - are just two examples of the growing importance of intellectual property rights as commercial assets.

Legal claims and counterclaims over intellectual property rights have become part of doing business not just in China, but in many other countries as well. So has using litigation, and the threat of litigation, as a commercial weapon.

Apple's iPad difficulties are not really about whether it has infringed a trademark or not. This is not a case of a local Chinese company "stealing" a foreigner's intellectual property, the issue is who owns the trademark. Before launching its hugely successful iPad tablet in China, Apple was aware that someone else had registered IPAD trademarks in China and other countries. So, very sensibly, it decided to try and buy them. In fact, the trademark was registered by Proview long before Apple launched the iPad in the United States, indeed long before anybody even knew Apple's popular tablet would be called an iPad. Proview and National Semiconductor even held a press conference to announce their IPAD product in 2000, although it never materialized.