Apple and China-based graphic display maker Proview squared off in a Shanghai court Wednesday, as the battle over the use of the "iPad" trademark continued to heat up in China. Apple argued before the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court that banning sales of the iPad would not be in the best interest of China's economy.

AppleInsider reports that Foxconn shuffled employees around when inspectors from the Fair Labor Association recently took a tour of some of their facilities. A non-governmental labor rights group said that Foxconn relocated under-age workers to different areas of the plant during the tour before the FLA inspections commenced.

Over the weekend some modern-day hucksters decided to put up "Pokémon Yellow" on Apple's App store. The app, which purported to be "just like the original" and has since been yanked from the store by Apple, made it into the number 3 position on the store's paid app charts. The app certainly confused plenty of customers, who gleefully plunked down .99 cents to play an authentic Pokémon game on their iOS device of choice, only to find that it crashed when launching.

ABC's popular late night news program Nightline, will offer viewers an exclusive inside look at the working conditions at one of Foxconn's notorious assembly plants on Tuesday evening. The program promises an "unprecedented" look inside Apple’s Foxconn plants in China, which have been criticized as being sweatshops and labor camps with poor working conditions that treat their employees horribly.

Xie Xianghui, the lawyer representing Shenzhen Proview Technology in China, said that the Intermediate People’s Court in Huizhou (a city in the southern China province of Guangdong) ruled on Friday that distributors should stop selling Apple's iPad devices  in the region. The company is in a bitter dispute with Apple in China because it owns the rights to the "iPad" trademark there. Under Chinese law, the company has the power to stop imports and exports of the product. 

Apple's social gaming network currently on the iOS will be supported by Mac OS X with the release of Update 10.8 Mountain Lion, according to Edge. Update 10.8 Mountain Lion is a paid update that will be released this summer. Like its iOS counterpart, Game Center on Mac will include support for achievements, scoreboards, online play, game invites and matchmaking, and add cross-platform play and in-game voice chat.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that his company is committed to working with manufacturing partners that offer its employees a "fair and safe work environment."

"Where they can earn competitive wages and they can voice their concerns freely. Apple's suppliers must live up to this to do business with Apple," he said.

Chinese company Shenzhen Proview Technology said today that it plans to enforce its "iPad" trademark in the country further by asking customs officials to ban imports and exports of Apple’s most popular device. With all of Apple's iPad devices being manufactured in the country (through Foxconn) this could prove to be a serious threat to its business, because the Proview has already found success on the local level with getting the iPad removed in one unnamed city, according to an Associated Press story.

Apple is back in court assailing Samsung with two patents it obtained in December of last year. In documents filed Tuesday in the San Jose federal court, Apple used freshly-granted US Patents 8,074,172 and 8,086,604 to seek a temporary injunction against Samsung. From the patent descriptions:

According to this VentureBeat report some customers are so upset over Apple using Chinese labor to assemble their products under substandard working conditions that they have decide to protest with a petition. This effort isn't just a handful of people either - a group of consumers will deliver a petition signed by 250,000 customers to the company's store at Grand Central Station in New York City tomorrow and in other locations around the globe.

Apple is apparently cracking down on applications that they consider to be clones of other popular apps on its App Store. Evidence of such a crackdown comes from web site VideoGameWriters, who noted that one particular app developer - who is fond of using "familiar titles" for his apps - seems to have less of them available on the APP Store today.

According to a Touch Arcade forum user, a company has been offering to boost the ranking of free apps using bots on Apple's App Store. According to a user named "walterkaman," the unnamed company will set up automated and repeated downloads of a client's app in order to push it into Apple's Top Free charts. While the company was not named and the story has - as of yet - remained unverified, it has caught the attention of Apple.

Apple has hired a former Xbox Live marketing person to head up its app business in Europe. The latest top executive to land at Apple is the former head of Xbox Live marketing Robin Burrowes. Burrowes who joined the company earlier this month, will serve as the company’s new head of App Store Marketing for iTunes Europe.

Burrowes worked at Microsoft for seven years, handling the product, business, and marketing for Xbox Live in several regions including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Responding to a recent and rather extensive report on the horrific working conditions at Foxconn in the New York Times, Apple's CEO Tim Cook came out strongly against it in a memo purportedly sent to the entire company. The article, at least in Apple's view, came to the conclusion that the iPad maker either knew about the abuses at these assembly plants in China and ignored them, or they simply didn’t care.

Apple continues to prove that whoever runs its approval department for iOS apps may not be paying attention. As this C&VG story points out the latest offenders is a Mario Kart rip-off called 'Mole Kart.' Available for right around $2, Mole Kart looks suspiciously like Mario Kart.

Atari says that, while it admires the work of independent developers, it must defend its intellectual property. The company made its comments after it was revealed yesterday that it had been using its tight relationship with Apple to take down games that had a "passing resemblance" to games in its extensive back catalog of classic games arcade games. Black Powder Media claimed that it took its games Vector Tanks, Vector Tanks Extreme, and Vector Tanks 3 off the app store after Atari claimed the games infringed on its Battlezone IP.

According to new data released by app analytics firm Flurry, 1.2 billion applications were downloaded for Android and iOS devices between December 25 and December 31. Earlier in the week the group predicted that in that same period it expected new Android and iOS device activations to be right around 6.8 million. Now they are saying that the number is probably closer to 20 million.

According to iOS game developer Black Powder Media, Atari is removing games from the App Store (with the help of Apple, of course) that resemble anything from its extensive back catalog of classic games. The company developed a game called Vector Tanks 3, which bears a slight resemblance to Battlezone. Atari has also threatened legal action against iOS developers who are developing games that it deems are rip-offs of its owned IPs.

According to this TechieBuzz report, analysts are telling Apple that they should collect up to $10 per device in royalties from companies that are using technology that they hold patents for. Kevin Rivette, managing partner at intellectual property firm 3LP Advisors LLC, said in an interview with Bloomberg that Apple could probably collect up to $10 in royalties for every Android device sold and that would be twice what Microsoft is believed to receive for each HTC Android device sold.

According to this Ars Technica report, Apple has allied itself with a known patent troll to take out its enemies. The company has had some covert dealings with Digitude Innovations, a company that enjoys being paid in patents so it can beat the hell out of companies in court.

Samsung should be happy today as Australia’s High Court removes the country-wide ban that was put on its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet - the result of an injunction in its continuing trademark disputes with Apple. The tablet had been under an injunction since July of this year.

Australia’s court froze sales of the device earlier this year after Apple filed an infringement suit against the Galaxy Tab. At the time Samsung called the court's ruling "grossly unjust." The thrust of Apple's lawsuits is that the Galaxy tab shares many similarities with the iPad.

While Apple managed to get a number of preliminary injunctions against Samsung in other countries in their ongoing battle of trademark disputes related to iOS devices, it looks like the US courts aren't playing ball. US District Judge Judy Koh has denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction that would have barred Samsung from selling its Galaxy brand tablets and smartphones on Friday. While thing could go Apple's way eventually after a full trial, the decision allows Samsung to continue to sell its Android-based devices without interference from the courts or Apple.

The ESRB and the CTIA detailed a new ratings systems for mobile games this week - backed by such companies as AT&T, Microsoft, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless. Two companies that were curiously absent from that list hold the lion's share of the market when it comes to platforms: Apple and Google.

EPIX, the premium entertainment service that is a joint venture of Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM, will soon be on some pretty familiar devices. The premium programming is already available on a number of platforms including Android and the iPhone. Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer for the company, says that the service will be available next month on Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Apple's iPad.

Marketing firm BlueKai has compiled the profile of the typical iPad buyer, listing three traits that land in the "highly likely to buy" category. The data shows that the typical iPad buyer owns a pet, is male, and is a frequent purchaser and player of video games. Health care professionals, international travelers, apartment dwellers and organic food fans also scored high on the list. The firm also found that vitamin takers, domestic business travelers, married couples and college graduates had common attributes of iPad owners.

According to new data from Nielsen, iPad and iPhone are the most wanted devices for gaming and entertainment. The iPad is the most wanted consumer electronic among children ages 6-12 for this holiday season, according to Nielsen. Interest has increased in Apple's iPad over the last year too; close to half (44 percent) of children have expressed interest in the product, which is up from 31 percent in 2010. Other popular Apple devices are also wanted by kids including the iPod Touch (30 percent) and iPhone (27 percent).

The 2012 Harris Poll Youth EquiTrend study by Harris interactive is making Nintendo very happy today. While game systems in general receive higher scores than other technologies surveyed in Harris Interactive's annual survey, Nintendo Wii earns the overall highest score among all technology brands included in the study.

Bloomberg reports that Samsung Electronics has finally overtaken Apple in the last quarter to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor. Both companies have been embroiled in legal battles all over the world because of various patent infringement claims. Samsung shipped 27.8 million smartphones in the last quarter, taking around 23.8 percent of the market, according to Milton Keynes from U.K.- based Strategy Analytics. Apple’s 17.1 million shipments equated to 14.6 percent of the market. Nokia maintained a third-place position.

A Shanghai activist is accusing Apple's Beijing store of passing old iPhones as brand new. According to a story in the Shanghai Daily, activist Wang Hai - who is representing two citizens - filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Chinese court accusing the firm of selling refurbished iPhones. Both purchases were made at the company's store in Beijing, China.

Lots of interesting tidbits are being revealed about Apple founder Steve Jobs this week - all related to interviews he conducted prior to his death for an upcoming authorized biography. A couple of the juiciest quotes relate to his animosity concerning Google's Android mobile operating system. In one interview he made a vow to spend all of Apple's $40 billion to destroy Google’s rival smartphone operating system.

Jobs told biography author Walter Isaacson that he considered Android "grand theft" of his idea for a mobile operating system.