Questions over the Windows Trademark

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? :)

Comments

little guy can win these things...

[President Chimp Toe]

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.

Trademarks and "Slashdot" and "Windows"

[Seth Finkelstein]

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)

Microsoft product names.

[PrimeNumber]

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

Intent?

[Evangelion]

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.

Re:Intent?

[i_am_nitrogen]

...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.

Re:X-Windows?

[steve_l]

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

Re:The issue of "secondary meaning"...

[Sloppy]

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.