Apple Inc. prevailed in their fight against Chinese cell phone creator Xiaomi Inc. from registering its "Mi Pad" tablet PC as an EU trademark on the grounds that the name was excessively comparative, making it too similar to Apple's "iPad".

The court Stated: “The dissimilarity between the signs at issue, resulting from the presence of the additional letter ‘m’ at the beginning of “Mi Pad”, is not sufficient to offset the high degree of visual and phonetic similarity between the two signs,”

Xiaomi filed an application in 2014 with the EU Intellectual Property Office ( EUIPO ) to register Mi Pad as an EU trademark.  

Apple subsequently lodged a complaint that the EUIPO upheld in 2016 on the grounds that consumers would think Mi Pad was a variation on Apple’s iPad trademark.

Also, English-speaking consumers were likely to understand the prefix “mi” as meaning “my” and therefore pronounce the “i” of Mi Pad and iPad in the same way.

Source: Economic Times