Supreme Court Weakens Design Protection Patents

werdna writes: "A recent article criticized Apple for overreaching by asserting "design protection" for the product configuration of its iMac line. Apparently the United States Supreme Court might agree with Slashdotters in an appropriate case. In a decision handed down yesterday, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara Brothers, Inc., the Court held that product design, like color, cannot be inherently distinctive and obtain trademark-like protections, until it has acquired distinctiveness such that the marketplace naturally perceives the design to be a designation of product source, such as in the way that "International Business Machines" is associated with products from a company in Armonk rather than a general description for typewriters sold internationally. Thus, absent a design patent, it has just become substantially tougher to obtain protections for industrial designs. Time will tell how important this decision will be."

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Microsoft trademarks BSOD Blue

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Redmond (AP) -- Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer announced the company will still be enforcing its trademark on the color coloquially known as "BSOD Blue". When questioned about the recent landmark decision Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara Brothers, Inc., Balmer said: "Microsoft firmly believes that this shade of blue, consistent with QUALITEX CO. v. JACOBSON PRODUCTS CO., has acquired 'a secondary meaning' which 'serves no other purpose' and is therefore a permissable trademark under the Lanham act. After all, what purpose could this blue serve other than to identify a computer as running Windows? Surely it is not to inform the user that his computer has crashed when crashing is implicit in the very notion of running Windows".

No immediate lawsuits have been filed, but the suspected potential respondents are believed to be undergoing puberty somewhere in Scandinavia.