Company that owns iPad trademark in EU wants Apple's business

Trademark law is not grant absolute ownership of a particular name. A name is only protected from uses which could lead a reasonable person to be confused as to whether to similarly (or identically) named products were in fact from the same company. In general, trademarks are limited to a particular industry.

ST's iPad appears to be a chip/circuit board interconnect technology. Unless you can find a "reasonable person" (good luck on that alone) who would be confused that a tablet computer like thing and little bits of solder on chips were the same thing, there's no cause of action under trademark law.

See Apple Corps versus Apple Computer for an identical case. Computers were deemed to be not the same thing as records. Both Apple's continued to do business under their chosen names.

"Change the name, not a big deal", Steve Jobs, 2.009

It looks like STMicroelectronics is using IPAD, so would you say IPAD, I PAD, IP AD, or IPA D? The writer is somehow convinced it is pronounced iPad. Where does STM use that spelling?

I had to idea someone could trademark an acronym.

Apple is already a customer of ST Micro: the accelerometers in the iPhone are provided by the latter (at least they were for the original iPhone, I don't know for the 3GS).

Note that the ST-Ericsson joint-venture designs and builds ARM-based processors very similar to Apple's A4. Their latest chip is the U8500, which contains a Cortex A9 core. But I can't imagine how ST could sell this to Apple which now has its own processors and in-house expertise.

Are you blind or did you not know Apple itself is a patent troll?

For a company that protects its' copyrights and trademarks as fiercely as Apple does, they don't seem to have had much respect for the copyrights and trademarks of others in this case.

STMicro is a fabrication company (they make chips for people). I assume that they want Apple to start fabricating all of their silicon like the A4 through STMicro.

By "customer" they may have simply meant "trademark licensee". That's a common resolution when a big company wants to use a trademark controlled by a little one: the former gives the latter a bunch of cash, and both walk away as "winners".

patent troll? this company actually makes products, patent trolls typically don't.

plus, this is a trademark issue, not a patent issue.