Days after Japanese company Fujitsu claimed that it owns the iPad name, Apple has been hit by another claim that could see the company cut out of the Chinese market, where the copying and counterfeiting of consumer electronic products is rampant.The Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Company claims that the new iPad design is based on its P88 tablet and if Apple tries to enter the Chinese market it will sue the US company.
A company executive said that Apple had copied Shenzhen Great Loong Brother’s design, right down to the casing and bezel around the screen.”We won’t have any choice but to report them,” Xiaolong Wu, the company president, told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “It will certainly affect our sales.”
Apple has refused to comment on the possible legal action, but industry experts say any legal action by the Chinese company is unlikely to succeed. The two devices are wildly different, with the P88 using a resistive touch-screen rather than the capacitive multi-touch screen of the Apple iPad, and using a 250GB hard drive compared to the iPad, which uses flash memory.