Apple wins EU trademark case against Xiaomi’s ‘Mid Pad’ tablet

It’s been three years now when Xiaomi applied to the EU Intellectual Property office (EUIPO) to get an EU trademark for its ‘Mi Pad.’ after that Apple lodge a complaint against this trademark registration saying that the name resembles company’s well-established name ‘i Pad.’ The case was then transferred to The General Court, the European Unions second highest, where the decision came in favour of Apple. The court declared that Mi pad as a trademark could not come in public interest as it will confuse the consumers with the broad similarities of the name.

Image Courtesy: DealeXtreme

On Tuesday, Apple won the battle over this trademark patent issue when the court gave a statement in favour of Apple saying “The dissimilarity between the signs at issue, resulting from the presence of the additional letter ‘m’ at the beginning of “Mi Pad”, is not sufficient to offset the high degree of visual and phonetic similarity between the two signs.”

The agreed with the EUIPO’s decision which was in favour of Apple by saying, English-speaking consumers were likely to understand the prefix “mi” like “my,” and hence they will pronounce it as “I” of Mi Pad and iPad in the same way.

It might be possible that the Chinese smartphone maker will move to a higher court with an aim to gain victory at this battle, but as of now, no such confirmation has arrived from the company’s end.

Since November the company started making a place in Europe as well by began selling smartphones in Spain. Xiaomi is currently holding the tag of China’s fourth-largest mobile vendor and India’s largest smartphone selling brand. The company has also started selling its devices in many more countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Russia and many more. The next can come from the higher court if Xiaomi moves to face Apple there too.