Apple has paid £38m to settle a dispute in China over the ownership of the iPad name.
The payout removes a potential obstacle to selling the tablet in the key Chinese market.
The US firm said it bought the global rights to the iPad name from Shenzhen Proview Technology in 2009.
But Chinese authorities said the rights had never been transferred, and a Chinese court ruled in December that Proview still owned the name in China.
Proview, which is struggling financially, had asked Chinese officials to seize iPads in an apparent effort to pressure Apple to settle.
But Guangdong High People's Court confirmed the money had been paid and declared: "The iPad dispute is ended."
China is Apple's second-largest market after the US, and is the source of much of the California-based company's sales growth.
Proview lawyer Xie Xianghui said the firm had been hoping for more money, but felt pressured to settle because it needed to pay its debts.
He said Proview had been seeking as much as £255m and might still be declared bankrupt in separate legal proceedings, despite the £38m from Apple.
The dispute centred on whether Apple acquired the iPad name in China when it bought rights in various countries from a Proview affiliate in Taiwan for £35,000.
The December court ruling said Proview, which registered the iPad trademark in China in 2001, was not bound by that sale, even though it was part of the same company.
The case gave Chinese authorities the chance to show that their courts could impartially resolve intellectual property disputes.
But it also raised the possibility that technology investors might have been put off by a negative outcome for Apple.
Chinese regulators said Proview clearly owned the mainland name rights under Chinese rules.
Apple has yet to announce a China release date for the new iPad, colloquially called the iPad 3, but the country's telecommunications equipment certification agency approved the tablet in May.
All of Apple's iPads are made in China by Foxconn Technologies Group, which employs more than a million people in its sprawling factories.
Brazil's government says Taiwan-based Foxconn plans to open factories there to produce iPads and other products.
Apple also ran into a trademark dispute before it launched the iPhone in 2007.
Cisco Systems, a maker of networking hardware, had owned the trademark since 2000 and used it for a line of internet-connected desk phones.
After Cisco sued, the companies reached an undisclosed settlement and the phone launch went ahead as planned.
