iWant: How Apple secured the iPad name

Details have been emerging from the Gizmodo blog which has shed more light on the secretive way Apple bought the iPad name from a Chinese company.

It involves a firm of UK legal investigators, what looks like a council house in Essex, the world's second largest economy and the world's richest company.

The story goes that Apple asked a firm, whose offices are near Waterloo station, to find companies already using the letters IPAD in their company name so that when they launched their actual iPad device there would be no risk of claims for the similar resemblance.

The firm set up a front company called IP Application Development (IP AD), registered at a nondescript house in a small town in Essex (as detailed in my previous postings)).

In 2009 IP AD contacted Proview which was already using the name IPAD for its Internet Personal Access Device, a large computer monitor with web access.

Asked by Proview why they wanted the trademark, the firm replied it wanted to buy the abbreviation of its company name.

Proview was promised that IP AD would not compete with them.

The deal was done and the trademark sold for £35,000 (which division of Proview actually sold the trademark is now at the heart of the current casein China).

When Apple launched the iPad in 2010, Proview realised who it had actually sold the name to.

The guys who did the deal must havespent a long day kicking themselves around the office.

That's how the story goes. But is it fraud? It looks likea US court will decide. The case could take years.