The Shenzhen-based Proview Technology, which is insolvent and close to liquidation, and Apple, the world's most prominent high-tech company, settled their trademark dispute recently. In a Chinese popular context, the dispute is a fight between diaosi (low person) and gaoshuaifu (tall, handsome and rich person). The word diaosi was coined last year by single people who found their life was at a dead-end, and suggests being plain and ordinary, while gaoshuaifu are rich, successful, and mildly hated for their success.

Such a fight has triggered fierce debates. Some hold Proview hasn't behaved professionally, while some think the company was defending its legal rights. Anyway, the fight, lasting for over two years, has finally come to an end, as the Higher People's Court of Guangdong Province announced its verdict on July 3.

According to the settlement agreement, Apple has agreed to pay $60 million to Proview, which is much less than the initial compensation for trademark infringement claimed by Proview. That means Apple could purchase the trademark from Proview at a price of $60 million. Creditors of Proview may be frustrated by the result, since they once hoped to decrease their losses by helping Proview get generous compensation from Apple.

For Apple, whose market value is nearly $600 billion, $60 million is only a drop in the ocean. The amount is less than the sales turnover of Apple in the Chinese mainland in a day.

Even though, it is still rare to see a trade mark could be worth as high as $60 million in intellectual property rights cases in China. This unprecedentedly improves China's ordinary people's attention on ownership of trademarks. The rush to register trademarks will probably heat up and the price of trademarks is predicted to soar. Perhaps, in the future, it will be not so easy for gaoshuaifu companies like Apple to purchase trademarks from those diaosi companies anymore.

This two-year-long dispute may provide Chinese companies with many valuable experiences. What Chinese companies should learn from the case is not only that they should carry out prompt and thorough IPR protection, but also that companies should be strong enough to support the IPR protection. We can see from Proview and Apple's case, the influences of the gaoshuaifu firms are obviously much bigger.

Proview in fact has made more compromises. The initial sum in the settlement claimed by Proview was $400 million. Rowell Yang, founder and chairman of Proview, said the settlement was influenced by many factors.

Just imagine, if the iPad trademark had been in the hands of giant companies like Microsoft or Google, or Proview itself had sold many products trademarked as iPads in the market, or the iPad products made by Apple were not so popular, the result of the settlement might have been different. Or the dispute might not have happened at all.

Trademarks are a kind of IPR. Its core function is to provide legal guarantee to original or creative products or services. It shouldn't be used for speculation or investment.

In other words, companies claiming IPR should pay more attention on increasing the intellectual value of the products, not just claiming rights. For diaosi companies like Proview, they should enhance intellectual innovation rather than seeing trademark registration as a means for making a fortune.

The author is a lawyer based in Shanghai. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn