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Questions over the Windows Trademark

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the seizing-control-of-the-english-language dept.

TTop writes "As part of the Lindows lawsuit, the judge has preliminarily ruled that there are 'serious questions regarding whether "Windows" is a non-generic name and thus eligible for the protections of federal trademark law.'" I've always been bothered by Microsoft's habit of naming things using common words (Then again, my history of naming things includes confusing and bizarre names like 'Slashdot' and 'AnimeFu' so what do I know? :)

12 of 382 comments (clear)

  1. X-Windows? by alanjstr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How old is X-Windows? Is it prior art?

    1. Re:X-Windows? by winnetou · · Score: 2, Interesting
      How old is X-Windows? Is it prior art?

      It is older, but is not named X-windows. From the man-page (formatting changed due to posting rules):

      The X Consortium requests that the following names be used when referring to this software:
      • X
      • X Window System
      • X Version 11
      • X Window System, Version 11
      • X11

      The license tells a bit about its age:

      The X Window System standard was originally developed at the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and all rights thereto were assigned to the X Consortium on January 1, 1994.
      X Consortium, Inc. closed its doors on December 31, 1996.
      All rights to the X Window System have been assigned to the Open Software Foundation.
    2. Re:X-Windows? by steve_l · · Score: 3, Interesting

      MS might have been working on windows since '83, but they didnt ship till about '86. More to the point, the copyright statement of winXP says '1985-2001', so they dont claim they wrote any code before '85

    3. Re:X-Windows? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Really? I didn't know that, I thought IBM licensed it to both of them, because it's know as the "CUA" or something like that in both IBM-speak and OSF-speak.

  2. little guy can win these things... by President+Chimp+Toe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There was a similar court case in the UK recently.

    McDonalds took Yu Kwan Yuen, a chinese retaurant owner to court for naming his restaurant "McChina". The judge was quite correct in ruling that McDonalds could not monopolise the prefix "Mc". It means "son of" in scottish, and Yuen had been living in scotland for some time and adopted "McChina" to indicate "Son of China".

    But would he have named his restaurant McChina if McDonalds didnt exist?

    This is a similar case to the Lindows situation. Although they are deriving their name from a generic source, they are (to some extent) stepping on somebody else's turf. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but certainly in the McChina case I think it wsa the correct outcome.

  3. Trademark law by saridder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think it's unfair, but you can trademark common english words. I just herad a report on NPR last week discussing the legal basis of a compnay trademarking a memory pill called "Senior Moment." A law profesor said it is OK to do.

    But, he also said other people can trademerk the same name as long as the two products do not belong in same category (such as software) and do not fool consumers. Therefore, it would be perfectly leagl to start a Microsoft clothing line (or windows clothing line). As for Lindows, it may be considered confusing to the lay consumer to have a Windows and Lindows OS in same market. But IANAL so don't quote me in court if MS tries to clean your clock when you sell Microsoft brand T-shirts.

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  4. Trademarks and "Slashdot" and "Windows" by Seth+Finkelstein · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Naming something Slashdot was a good idea -at least in terms of trademark law!

    However, naming something Windows was a bad idea (again, for trademark law)

    Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

  5. Microsoft product names. by PrimeNumber · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft started using using common generic names after hiring a marketing suit named Rowland Hanson whose previous experience had been with Neutrogena.

    Word & Chart, were the first to be name generically. What isnt commonly known is that Gates had to be argued and cajoled into using Windows, he wanted to call it "Interface Manager"

    Incidentally, Hanson was among the first to throw software samples into magazines (freebie demo disks). Given his past experience, it was a small leap from throwing perfume samples in Cosmo, to program samples in PC Week.

    My $0.02

  6. Intent? by Evangelion · · Score: 3, Interesting


    I realize that MS might not have as open-and-shut case as they want, but I doubt they'll lose this, simply because of the intent of the Lindows guy.

    He's selling a directly competing product, with a name that differs from Windows by only one letter. This is perfectly analogous to trying to sell a competing cola called "Loca Cola", or some such. He's clearly trying to derive benifit from the "Microsoft Windows" trademark.

    1. Re:Intent? by i_am_nitrogen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ...and WinZip (WinAmp, WinRar, ...) isn't? There's nothing in trademark law that says the product has to be competing to go after it. Microsoft wants to shut down Lindows.com, Inc. (notice that on Lindows.com it never says Lindows without another distinguishing suffix, such as "Lindows Insider" or "LindowsOS" or "Lindows.com, Inc.") because they might actually be a threat to the MS Windows monopoly. I think that Lindows was the perfect name choice. It has Lin, from Linux, and dows, from Windows, to indicate compatibility with both operating systems; not to ride on Microsoft's trademark (Microsoft are the ones who, using common names, tried to benefit from others work (such as those who .. uh... first made glass)). Suppose Microsoft wins? Big deal. LindowsOS will just get a new name. It's not like they need the name Lindows -- they can do just fine with any other name I'm sure.

      Final point: Microsoft has given them more publicity than they could ever buy with the meager funding of a post-dot-com startup. It's kinda funny, really.

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  7. Check out the tradmarks with windows in them. by JonWan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    www.uspto.gov
    It looks like there are a lot of Windows(tm) out there.

  8. Re:The issue of "secondary meaning"... by Sloppy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's one aspect of Apple vs Windows that is pretty different, though. "Apple" had no special meaning within the computer setting, wasn't a computer-specific term, etc. until that company entered the business. "Windows" was an increasingly commonly used word with special meaning within the computer setting, before Microsoft introduced that product. Their calling a product Windows was no less stupid than if I introduce a product called "RAM" or "disk" or "pointer" and then claimed I had a trademark on the word.

    Actually, I did once write a [pretty crappy and dubiously useful] C64 program called "Sloppy Disk". If I had sold it, and spent a lot of money marketing it, would we now be living in a world where people have to say "Disk is a registered trademark of the Sloppy."? No way.

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