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Microsoft and Lindows Settle Trademark Case
An anonymous reader writes "According to an official press release hosted over at Yahoo, Microsoft and Lindows have settled their trademark case, and have announced: 'Over the next few months Lindows will cease using the term Lindows and transition to Linspire globally as our company name and primary identifier for our operating system product.' Although it's claimed: 'Terms of the settlement are confidential', ZDNet has an article filling in more details, including the fact: 'Microsoft will pay upstart Linux seller Lindows $20 million... [so that Lindows] will give up the Lindows name and assign related Web domains to Microsoft.'" We've previously covered the Microsoft and Lindows conflict in some detail.
I was hoping that Lindows would have went all the way to prove that the Windows trademark is too generic a term to be valid. Instead they take the easy option and go for the cash.
Although I guess you probably would find it difficult to refuse MS cash if you were a company.
MS sues and Linspire walks away with $20M to use against MS to make their product and Linux better.
Sweet!!!
Know what? Arguments about how MS is trying to enforce an "overly broad Windows trademark" are now moot. The settlement shows that Microsoft is aware that they cannot force names like Lindows to stop just because of a similarity, but they ARE willing to pay out to keep a monopoly. And know what? That's damn fair.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
One, 20 million dollars is 1/3000th of their cash hoard. A movie ticket to someone making $250,000 a year salary.
Two, there was a real danger of losing their trademark on Windows as being generic.
Infuriate left and right
You guys are happy that people can extort money from a company by naming their products something similar?
Whether you like it or not, whether its trademarkable or not, people associate 'Windows' with Microsoft Windows. Naming their product 'Lindows' was an attempt to be leach off of a brand name.
This is so obvious to anyone who isn't blinded by dumb hatred of anything Microsoft. If there was any OSS software that was popular amongst the novice computer-user masses, and MS named a competing product almost the same thing, there would be OSS bedwetter outcry galore.
This dishonest crap of changing one letter in a name, or naming it something very similar, or making the logo similar, has been going on for far too long; long before commerical computer programs. Its BS, no matter what medium its in. Don't applaud it.
Instead of playing off the *indows theme, maybe choose a name that plays off it, but is not directly related, like "Doors," or "Steps," or something.
...I dunno... sounds hokey.. but it sends subtle jabs to Windows without infringing directly on copyright..
It seems knock-offish I know, but imagine the advertising possibilities:
"Why look through a Window when you can walk through a Door"
or
"Make sure you take the right Steps to yada yada yada..."
This message was posted using recycled electrons.
Actually, MR has been in the trenches quite a bit.
He was one of the first people to try challenging Microsoft for the desktop head-on.
He managed to grab $20M in funding from Microsoft.
He funded the "run Linux on the XBox awards" that partly funded the practical breaking of the XBox DRM, which probably cost Microsoft quite a pretty penny in lost royalties.
MR may not be a nice person. He may not even be someone that you want associated with Linux. You could argue that he hits below the belt when he fights. But one thing you can't say is that he wasn't fighting against Microsoft, because he did, more so than just about anyone out there -- he walked up, challenged Microsoft, and has been steadily beating them, abeit with a thousand little stabs. He's managed to cut himself a nice little niche out of Windows market share while staying about as high-profile at Redmond as could possibly be imagined. He's one of those rare beasts -- a competent exec.
He's hardly sold out -- he now has a slightly changed product name (that personally, I find more appealing), a good chunk of money, plenty of publicity from the case, and based on what he's done so far, I expect that he'll do fine for himself.
May we never see th