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Excel Registered as Trademark, 19 Years Late

Posted by timothy on from the trademarks-are-dead dept.

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."

4 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Excel is a real word too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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??

    1. Re:Excel is a real word too! by krymsin01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So is Gateway. I'd like to see you try to start selling your own Gateway branded computers, though.

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      stuff
  2. Re:Uhhh by JPriest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  3. What's the big deal? by Txiasaeia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    Condemnant quod non intellegunt.