Apple has been on the patent trolling warpath recently, dragging Motorola and Samsung into court over violating things like its “slide to unlock” feature.

But somebody in China is giving them a taste of their own medicine…namely the people who sold them the trademark to the name “iPad” in China.

ProView Technologies makes monitors. They’re one of dozens of off-brand monitor makers, and mostly notable for a tortured and unethical financial history. They supposedly sold the trademark to the name “iPad” to Apple in 2006…except now they’re claiming that it was an affiliate who didn’t have the rights to the name, so give us some of that sweet iPad bank.

Even more amusingly, they’ve gotten iPads blocked from sale in China, because remember, this is China, the land where foreigners don’t have intellectual property rights.

ProView is ultimately going to lose the case: documents are turning up that prove they’re full of crap. Still, it’s nice to see that even the biggest company in the world occasionally gets smacked around by the laws they themselves abuse so much.

image courtesy Shutterstock