I’m pretty sure most have heard that Apple is having a bit of a bad time over in China in a trademark dispute with a company called Proview over just who owns the iPad name in China, and it appears that Proview has now been handed a little legal victory over Apple on Friday.

According to a report by the guys over at Apple Insider, an intermediate People’s court in China’ s Guangdong province has handed down a ruling against the sale of the Apple iPad and has advised distributors to stop selling the iOS slates.

Proview has filed suits against Apple in several courts and asks that commercial authorities bock the Apple iPad from being sold. We recently reported that iPads were disappearing off retailer’s shelves due to the trademark dispute.

Although some recent reports claim that enforcing such a ban on the sale of the iPad in China would be difficult because of the popularity of the iOS tablet with Chinese customers.

However it is all becoming somewhat confusing as there are conflicting decision about this case with a December ruling in the favour of Proview being appealed at the Guangdong high court whilst a previous Hong Kong court ruling came down on Apple’s side.

So although Proview has gained that small legal victory against Apple the effect of that ruling may not be all that far reaching and at the moment it is somewhat unclear just what affect the ruling will have on this ongoing trademark dispute.

One thing is for sure though, if Apple iPad’s are not being sold in China, obviously Apple will feel the financial pinch of lost revenue and no doubt something they want to get cleared up as quickly as possible, but no doubt this fight will continue for some time yet.

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