Excel Registered as Trademark, 19 Years Late

Posted by timothy on Saturday November 13, 2004 @11:49PM 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."

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Excel is a real word too! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-13 23:54 · 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 · 2004-11-14 00:03 · 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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