Lindows.com

Gotta love the courts' verdict.
http://www.net2.com/lindows/
I survive on MS products but thier politics and corporate strategies irritate me.
Good to see the underdog have thier day

Yeah. I for one am VERY curious to see if the Lindows guys will be able to pull this off. An OS that runs BOTH Windows and Linux software!
Sounds really good, especially since MS absolutely NEEDS this competition. They've had everything going their way for far too long now!

For the unofficial (but cynical and often humorous) view on this so far check The Register here and here

Its amusing that they charge $99 for the right to beta test and give input on their software. Looks like vaporware.

Still better than Micro$oft who charge way more than that to beta test their OS's.

Yes, but you know that windows exists and that it will be released in the future. You could in theory pay $99 to be a lindows insider and see no semi functional software whatsoever but still give your "input and suggestions". Lindows might owe its whole existance to its MS trial.

Sean

The best quote from the document is the following:

Although Lindows.com certainly made a conscious decision to play with fire by choosing a product and a company name that differs by only one letter from the world's leading computer software program, one could just as easily conclude that in 1983 Microsoft made an equally risky decision to name its product after a term commonly used in the trade...

MS did the same thing with "DOS." I do believe that they should be allowed to hold the trademark, but that its protection is (or should be) limited. Preventing someone else from using the name "Windows" for a different operating system would fall under this protection. Preventing someone from using any MS "Windows" or recognisable logo (or variant) should also fall into this.

I'm glad to see "Lindows" holding its own. I think it's a lame name and a dishonest marketing effort, but I'm glad to see this decision and hope it will cause a few other large companies to tread lightly with generic marks. I thought this was going to be about a domain-ony dispute when I first jumped into the thread. In domain cases I would normally side in favour of the registrant provided it wasn't a case of cyber-squatting (ie. blackmail, reselling, etc..) or using the registered name for competition or defamation. A much bigger bad-guy for trademark disputes is Apple. They've unfairly gone after many people who didn't know they'd be able to successfully defend their cases (of course having the money to do so can be a problem). Especially since Apple doesn't have many marks of its own that weren't previously registered by other parties. (Needless to say, a mark must include a design anyway, you can't register a trademark for a simple "word")

Bruno

(Needless to say, a mark must include a design anyway, you can't register a trademark for a simple "word")

Not true. From the US Patent and Trademark Office's Basic Facts About Trademarks (section ``Depiction of the Mark''):

To apply to register a mark comprised of word(s), letter(s), and/or number(s), with no particular stylization or design element included in the mark, you should select the "typed" drawing format.

But, for all I know, Canadian patents might be different.

Hmm, that goes against information I gleaned from the USPTO last year while looking into registering a few marks. But, what are the other supporting requirements?

Many places in the world don't do "R"egistered marks, nor do they allow the use of common/generic words like "wood" or "apple" - you'd have to do something like "Wood Manglers" or "Apple Computer, Inc." TM law and practises vary quite a bit from country to country and it's pretty interesting (or hairy...) if you want to use a mark around the world. If you think the USPTO stuff is fun to read, check some of the info on the Industry Canada website sometime. It'll be nice sorting out all the nuances between the two when the time comes.

Hmm, imagine IBM had decided they wanted to drop the words "Business Machines" and start using only "International"

Many of the Apple marks are registered with specific designs (some are designs only and some are no doubt with the permission of previous mark holders because of closeness in market.

I'll have to look into this a lot more closely soon.

Bruno

Oh, I think that the USPTO would likely take exception with very common words, but, then again, most trademarks are only valid for a segment of the total market. That is, if IBM had the word ``International'' tradmarked, it would probably only be valid in the computing (or business, or whatever) world, while International Truck and Engine could have it in another, and Amnesty International might have it in another (to stretch who might be having such a trademark).

You can also get trademarks on specific logos. They refer to those as a ``stylized or special form'' mark, as opposed to the earlier mentioned ``typed'' marks.

And for those of you that were wondering what ``service marks'' are (you can see little ``SM''s on things sometimes where you might expect a ``TM''), they are the same thing as trademarks, but used to represent services instead of goods (meaning physical products).