Chinese tablet maven threatens iPad suit: 'Apple stole our design!'

"I was very angry and suprised two days ago when I saw the news of the iPad presentation," the president of Shenzhen Great Loong Brother, Wu Xiaolong, told Spanish news site El Mundo, according to Google Translate and our handy Spanish diccionario. "It is certainly our design."

Wu added: "We are considering legal action, but we can not do much in the United States. But if Apple brings the iPad to China, we will be forced to bring legal action against them, because it will certainly affect our sales." Apple did not respond to our request for comment on Wu's threat.

"I was very angry and suprised two days ago when I saw the news of the iPad presentation," the president of Shenzhen Great Loong Brother, Wu Xiaolong, told Spanish news site El Mundo, according to Google Translate and our handy Spanish diccionario. "It is certainly our design."

Wu added: "We are considering legal action, but we can not do much in the United States. But if Apple brings the iPad to China, we will be forced to bring legal action against them, because it will certainly affect our sales." Apple did not respond to our request for comment on Wu's threat.

Great Loong's six-month-old P88 tablet PC

So how similar is the iPad to Wu's tablet, which is variously identified by Great Loong as the P88, Tablet PC-P88, and P-P-P88, and which appears remarkably similar to the company's P-P-I88, P-P-P68, and others?

Not much. In point of fact, the P88 and its brethren more closely resemble not only many previous Windows-based tablet PCs, but also the proposed "slate" from HP that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer waved at a keynote crowd during last month's Consumer Electronics Show.

(...) There's one thing that the iPad and the P88 do have in common: they're both flat. Beyond that, differences emerge:

• P88: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, or Linux
• iPad: rejiggered iPhone OS
• 
  
• P88: 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor
• iPad: 1GHz custom Apple A4 SoC
• 
  
• P88: 10.2-inch, 1024x600 touchscreen display
• iPad: 9.7-inch, 1024x768 multi-touch display
• 
  
• P88: 160 or 250GB hard drive
• iPad: 16, 32, or 64GB flash storage
• 
  
• P88: claimed battery life of 1.5 hours
• iPad: claimed battery life of 10 hours
  
  
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