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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."
And tell me that's not a case of a egotistical marketing think-tank.m icrosoft.com%2Flibrary%2Ftoolbar%2F3.0%2Ftrademark s%2Fen-us.mspx&siteId=3&oId=2100-1012-5449348&ontI d=7343&lop=nl.ex
[Link from news.com.com article] http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.
Second on the list: Active Accessibility.
How does Active Accessibility become a trademark? It's two common english words that could be used to describe anything.
My stairs have Active Accessibility. My bicycle has Active Accessibility. My television has Active Accessibility.
I can understand the need for a business to have recognisable trademarks. You don't want people to be chatting and one person says,
`I use Dogs Bollocks 2002. It's the best.'
And the other person thinks he's talking about a separate competitors product with the same name.
What I don't understand though is this apparent need companies have to register plain english (or whatever their native tongue is) words without any sort of company recognition built into the trademark.
Would it not be better to have, `MS Active Accessibility' instead of plain `Active Accessibility' simply for the fact that it would possibly negate any confusion over whether I mean Microsoft's Active Accessibility or my stair's Active Accessibility?
And what about the poor bugger named Tex Murphy? Does he get into trouble any time his name comes up on the `Net along with something to do with games?
His name is Robert Paulsen...
Lotus made their Lotus Excel from 1982 to 1992, making that even older than your Hyundai :-) http://fp.arcnet.f9.co.uk/excel.htm
Of course, neither the existence of the Lotus Excel nor the Hyundai Excel makes the blindest bit of difference to whether or not MS can trademark Excel the spreadsheet, because they are completely different industries - nobody is going to confuse the two...
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Yes, but if you were going to pick the most generic one-word name for a word processor you could think of, what would it be?
How about for an office suite?
And a spreadsheet program? "Spreadsheet" is what springs to my mind.
When you use a word that is not normally used in a particular frame of reference, you can't trademark it. This is not the case for Excel.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Just a question about trademarks, so although I cannot sell gateway branded computers, could I sell gateway branded pancakes? Are trademarks valid only in the industry they were registered for?
Monstar L
Actually, Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
This could be a Good thing. Companies can lose trademarks if they become part of common language. The Linoleum trademark was lost this way and Kleenex almost lost their trademark. An interesting situation is that in Canada, the name "Aspirin" is a tradmark and the common name is "ASA". In the US, the name "ASA" is a tradmark and the common name is "aspirin". I wonder if the trademark "Fridgidaire" could have been lost because at one time everybody was calling a refrigerator (reguardless of it's maker) a "frigidaire".
Here's a question for anyone out there with any knowledge in this area: how close does a name need to be to a trademark to constitute infingement? Here in Colorado, the primary electrical utility company for much of the state is Xcel Energy. "Xcel" is not spelled the same, but does the fact that it sounds exactly alike and is only one letter off mean anything from the perspective of the law? Does it mean anything that it's a totally different industry (and hence little chance it would be confused with a Microsoft product)?
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Is this really true? From what I understand, that is the case with copyright, but not trademarks. Perhaps someone with some legal expertise can clarify, but from my understanding, a lack of a vigorous defense of a registered trademark is enough to lose it, much less not registering it in the first place.
I can say from first hand experience that trademark issues are so painful you will wish you were dead.
I just left a company that was launching a new product. Marketing had me investigate the availability of several domain names. I gave thema report of what was available. Weeks later, they told me they had registered a couple trademarks that corresponded with a domain and would I register the domain name. Well what do you know, the domain was now registered by someone else. (This became my fault.)
We sued the company for trademark infringement since we owned the trademark.
Long story short, we spend a year and thousands of dollars just to eventually drop the case and go with a different URL.
Trademarks are hell.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
"X-windows" had not been around officially under that name at all. The "X Window System" had, of course. _Colloqially_ people have been calling it X-Windows, of course. I do, even though I know its trademarked name, which is clumsy.
Aspirin was wrenched off Bayer as part of post-war reparations. Nothing to do with them not protecting it.
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
AFAIK, Microsoft doesn't sell a word processor called "Word". It sells a word processor called "Microsoft Word" and that's trademarked.
IIRC, That's because someone already had a PC word processor called "Word", so Microsoft trademarked "Microsoft Word" instead.
I challenge you to find a piece of Microsoft official documentation that refers to Microsoft's word processor as "Word" instead of "Microsoft Word".
Interesting thing about Bayer's trademark for Aspirin: they were forced to give it up to France Britain, Russia, and the US as part of the reparations stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. So it wasn't really lack of enforcement that lost them the trademark, it was losing a war.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Yes, the "windows" trademark is technically invalid becuase it is a generic term and there is loads of prior art (DECWindows, original Emacs, &c). Microsoft have almost admitted this and the judge implied it in MS v. Lindows (which is why MS payed Lindows lots to get off their backs). Even if this was not true Microsoft have technically lost the trademark through lack of enforcement.
(Actually it is worse than that because the highest court of appeal for trademarks in the US declared that "windows" is and always will be unregisterable then the US gov and Microsoft did something which has been censored in Lindows's evidence by the judge resulting in it being registered.)
Incidentally, until recently (I don't think now) the UK patent office listed on their w3s the _specific_ field that the the trademark holder wished to register for and "windows" was listed as been registered to MS in the generic category window(ing) systems.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Looks like they forgot to put the postage on a *lot* of cease and desist letters. Go here: http://www.ozgrid.com/Services/ExcelAdd-insPage.ht m
(there's a page 2 and 3, as well)
to see a slew of spreadsheet products from lots of different companies with Excel or XL in their name.
And then check out Microsoft's own site:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/defa ult.aspx
under "Analysis Tools"
to see no less than 15 different products from other companies with Excel in their name. Microsoft actually encourages you to get these other products by advertising them on their site.
Seems like a pretty big problem to me.
Unlike patent law, prior existence of other examples does not itself render the mark invalid.
Actually it does.
If a term is already being used to describe something you can't suddenly claim it to be your trademark.
For instance, you can't decide you want to make Beer (tm) beer.
If someone can show examples of where your trademark was already an industry standard term for the product/service/whatever you stand an extremely good chance of losing it.
This is why Microsoft settled with Lindows.
If they had let the case continue, they stood a very good chance of losing since "Windows" was already common computer terminology.
Although the terminology used is not identical, both patents and trademark require "uniqueness". You can't just claim rights to something that wasn't your idea.
Life is too short to proofread.
You are not at all talking about the same thing. "Prior art" in patent law automatically does a blow to your patent (assuming it is the same thing).
The existence of someone else using your trademark before you is not in itself problematic for a trademark holder.
It depends on the context of the so-called "prior art", including industry and scope of exposure.
Trademark law does not require uniqueness.
You are not at all talking about the same thing.
Legally, they're called differnet things but practially, it's the same concept:
You can't claim exclusive rights to something you didn't create.
If you want to patent the use of technique X in field Y, you better be the first person to use it.
If you want to trademark word X in field Y, there better not be anyone else using it.
"Prior art" in patent law automatically does a blow to your patent (assuming it is the same thing).
In the same sense that the common useage of a term can blow your trademark.
Trademark law does not require uniqueness.
It does WITHIN CONSTRAINTS just like patent law.
If your trademark isn't unique when you pick it's then your trademark itself becomes a deliberate attempt to confuse the consumer, they very thing trademark law is supposed to prevent.
You don't have to be the absolute first person to use every concept in your patent, nor do you have to be the first to use your trademark, but it DOES have to be unique. If someone else is using "your" trademark before you, in a reasonably similar field, the court is not going to protect it.
Try starting a company called "Harley Davidson Motorcycles" for example.
Life is too short to proofread.
> ... lack of a vigorous defense of a registered trademark is enough
:www.nissan.com/+Nissan+computers&hl=en). In that case Uzi Nissan did have the right to use the trademark Nissan as it was not used in anything that has to do with the automotive industry (Actually he was even able to reproduse evidence that he already used the name Nissan in an automobile spare parts business in the 70's, and did business with Nissan motors that prefered to identify itself as Datsun, and did nothing about his use of his last name in his automobile-related business back then). All this didn't help him to retain use of his domain. Apparently he was not rich enough. Perhaps he can still use it for email...
> to lose it, much less not registering it in the first place.
I wonder to what extent having my name registered in my passport and other official documents (birth certificate etc.) can be considered a defence for my using it for identification or network presence. Can I register my own name as a trademark for the purpose of network presence? E.G. for protecting my personal domain if and when some company decides to use it in their product? Or in case some company I don't know about already uses it? I would really like to know if anyone tried something of this sort, or if this makes legal sense at all. Do rich corporations have an advantage over individuals in using names?
The cited story (http://news.com.com/Microsoft+registers+trademark --19+years+late/2100-1012_3-5449348.html?tag=nefd. top) mentions the case of MikeRoweSoft.com, formerly owned by teenager Mike Rowe, who managed to negotiate a bit more than the $10 bucks reimbursement offered by MicroSoft for the domain. Now perhaps Mike Rowe's parents should have known better when registering the name Mike Rowe in their son's birth certificate in the early 90's or late 80's, as MicroSoft was already a well known name, and they perhaps should have taken into account the possibility that said son would perhaps one day decide to go into the software business (and what if Mike Rowe decided to sell facial tissue online? Would MicroSoft have a case then. Just kidding...)
Uzi Nissan's last name is a common Hebrew last name, derived from the name of the month in the Hebrew calendar, probably dating more than 3000 years. He registered the domain Nissan.com for use with his comuter related business around 1995, when the internet was still focused around computers, and long before Nissan motors showed any interest in network presence. Nissan Motors didn't manage to get the domain. But they did manage to deprive Uzi Nissan's use of the domain (http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:JH0zQdYEQ04J
Anyway, back to my original thought: can a name be registered as a trademark for the purpose of network presence? I use the name hadaso in many places for identification: in email accounts, in online forums, in my own domain. It is derived from my last name plus initial. I invested hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours of my life creating content thast is scattered around the web, mainly in open forums, discussion lists, talkbacks, Wikis etc., and almost all of them identify me using either my nickname (hadaso) or my full name. So I would like to protect my investment, and know that I will not be prevented in the future from freely using it. If posting on online forums was a business I could register the Trademark. Perhaps I can do it anyway (in what way? In which countries? Would it be of any use in real life? it didn't help Uzi Nissan that did register the Nissan trademark, though a bit late, like MS's registration of Excel®). To what extent is my "name already protected by something called common law trademark", a sort of protection that Excel® apparently enjoys according to the cited story?
The TurboExcel case mentioned seems clearcut to me: obviously it refers to MicroSoft's product, and no TradeMark protection is needed to see that. I'd bet that eve