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Excel Registered as Trademark, 19 Years Late
unassimilatible writes "In a snafu even better than forgetting to renew the Hotmail.com domain, it seems that Microsoft was a little late in registering 'Excel' as a trademark - 19 years late, to be exact. While MS claims it is protected by the common law of trademark, it may have abandoned the right to enforce the mark, as Savvysoft has been using the mark openly and conspicuously with TurboExcel for some time. TurboExcel, of course, runs on Linux, and MS just sent Savvysoft a cease-and-desist letter to stop using the mark. Apparently, 'Word' and 'Office' are also not registered marks of MS, but being generic terms, MS might have a lot more trouble trying to claim them as marks, as happened in the Lindows kerfuffle."
They made a point of saying that Word and Office are generic terms, but so is excel! It's a perfectly normal word too, so why is it different when it comes to trademarking??
When the "generic term" also happens to be referring to spreadsheets.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I recall reading somewhere a couple of years ago (here on slashdot, I think) that Microsoft had trademarked the lower case letter 'e' however.
O=='=++
Because we *all* know that common words can't be used as trademarks! I mean, if that was allowed, then someone would do something really crazy, like name a computer company after something common, perhaps a fruit!
"Orange Computer, Inc."
Come on people, get with the program. Trademarks are for a specific field, all that is required is that the term not already have a well known meaning *in that field*.
Until Excel (the spreadsheet) came along, the word 'excel' was not understood as the name of any particular piece of software. So, perfectly trademarkable.
using the mark openly and conspicuously with TurboExcel for some time
Microsoft filed in May. SavvySoft introduced TurboExcel in June. So, yes, it has been "openly and conspicuously" using the Excel brand "for some time", like the story post claims.
But the gutless faggot who wrote the article summary neglected to mention that "some time" really means one month AFTER Microsoft filed trademark.
Honestly, the story summary is just pure heat. Would you trust anything the author of this post has to say? I sure wouldn't. It's 100% pure bullshit propaganda.
Before you mod me down, realize that I'm not saying that Microsoft should be awarded a trademark for Excel. (I think it's too general a term, plus they waited 19 years, blah blah blah.) What I am saying, however, is that the story poster sucks large, hairy donkey balls for being such a dick wad. That's a subtle difference, you see.
Don't see what the big deal is. Why is MS even bothering? Nobody's going to confuse "Turbo Excel" with "Microsoft Excel" - nobody that *uses* Office or Windows, anyway.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I'm all for good conspiracy theories, but this one is a bit lofty....
First, they wouldn't just be bribing one judge... Large cases like this are generally tossed back and forth between a number of local and national courts if a settlement isn't reached before the appeals process begins. Thats a lot of judges, plus all the guys at the trademark office.
Second, established judges usually don't do all that much campaigning. The run for retention, not against other possible judges, and their reelection usually depends upon the opinions of the laywers who have tried cases before them. This is known as a bar retention percentage. Making poor decisions (whether because of money or not) would greatly deminish a judges chance at retention, and it would be very hard for any amount of money to make up for this.
Third, many many laywers, possibly even most of them, are very honorable. (examples... public defenders, many defense attornies, many prosecutors, the cabal of laywers at EFF and other public interest groups) What is not honorable is some of the arguments some laywers are forced to make as part of their job. Blame the problems on the perpetrators, not the laywers defending them.
The root of the problem is that if you throw enough money and laywers at a case, even if they are on the side that may be "evil" in the eyes of the public, they will be able to come up with some pretty convincing arguments. If the other side doesn't have enough laywers and money to refute these arguments there isn't much a judge can do. Plus, on the issue of Excel being a trademark, its pretty hard to argue against microsoft on this one. If you say "Excel" in relation to a computer to anyone in the world (who is at least a little familiar with computers) they will know exactly what you are talking about. TurboExcel, being a spreadsheet related utility, may in fact be infriging on this trademark... but we'll have to see how that case turns out.
One last thing... I do think the fact that the DoJ stopped pursuing microsoft right after Bush came into office is rather fishy... but thats the Prez and attorney general's call (John Ashcroft), not any judges.
(This became my fault)
It was your fault. If the domain names were open, you should have registered them for one year even if you didn't need them. If the name was good enough to waste management's time with, you should have registered it. The meeting times along dwarf the cost of the domain names. You were being penny pincher, pound foolish.
Why do people have to use the word fag or faggot? No matter what you think of homosexuality you shouldn't use offensive terms like that to describe it (or worse in this case not even describing it but simply using the term to indicate stupidity). It's just as bad as racism and offensive racist words.