THE Apple achieved an important victory this week involving one of its main products: the iPad.
At Europe, Ma had been fighting with Xiaomi since last year due to the Chinese attempt to register the name "Mi Pad" in the Old Continent she submitted an application in 2014 to the European Union's Intellectual Property Institute (European Union Intellectual Property Office, or EUIPO) to register the trademark in the region.
Apple, of course, claimed that "Mi Pad" is too similar to "iPad" and that it could confuse the minds of potential buyers.
The court responsible for analyzing the case understood Apple's arguments and stood by it, stating that “the dissimilarity between the signs in question, resulting from the presence of the additional letter 'm' at the beginning of 'Mi Pad', is not enough to compensate the high degree of visual and phonetic similarity between the two signs ”.
Both the court and EUIPO said that English-speaking consumers would probably understand the prefix "mi" as meaning "mine" and therefore pronounce the "i" of Mi Pad and iPad in the same way.
In fact, the explanation makes a lot of sense.
Xiaomi will still be able, if it wants, to appeal the decision to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
via Reuters
