Slashdot Mirror
Dell Loses Bid To Trademark "Cloud Computing"
1sockchuck writes "The USPTO has issued a 'non-final determination' refusing Dell's request to trademark the term 'cloud computing' (we discussed the application earlier), finding that the term is generic and 'therefore incapable of functioning as a source-identifier for applicant's services.' According to Data Center Knowledge, 'Dell has the option of filing a response to submit arguments to dispute the USPTO examiner's findings.'" Here is the USPTO's ruling. A week and a half ago the PTO cancelled its 'notice of allowance' for the mark, a move little remarked upon at the time.
Does it make anyone else sad when they think that there are fellow members of our race that would patent breathing if they could and would idly watch people that couldn't afford to pay their licensing fees suffocate?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Google ads on this page were promoting something called control in the cloud so I suppose dell have missed the boat.
If they got it, no one else could use this worthless buzzword. Now everyone has a chance to launch cloud computing on the web 2.0 while hyping it in the blogosphere.
*Sigh*
Gone!
Shouldn't this be a Slashdot Poll question like "What is a less generic name for Cloud Computing?"
a) Dell's Cloud Computing
b) gEverything has it, or it doesn't exist
c) Skynet's primary self awareness functions
d) Cloudboy Neal
It's called "McCloud Computing", and there's no point in copyrighting the name because there can be only one of them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They should have gone with "Cumulonimbus Capillatus Computing".
Heck of a lot more fun to say.
i.e. - Computing for idiots.
We should building a cloud computing module a piece of software in Linux kernel that should be free completely and no fucking patent! Patent is shit, Cloud computing piece of software module will be open source and patent-free and making cloud computing software source code be available on cloud of internet.
I work for a company (a bank) that seems to apply a trade/service-mark to random word combos in at least every third or forth sentence of any marketing--even internal materials. I envisage a child claiming "mine" all the time or using a label maker ad nauseam.
"...objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences, subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny." -Gould
but that is funny. : )
It looks like Danny Noonan used that money he won in the big golf game with Jack Hartounian to go to law school after all!
thinking. if you so much as think of putting together a patent i will sue you or demand royalties.
don't think about patents, think about lawyers, ideas, money, food or sleep. i will issue promptly cease and desists emails and letters.
Not me. Feeling sad about that is patented, and I can't pay the licencing fees. :(
Microsoft announces its new product for distributed computing architectures, "Microsoft Cloud".
-- Alastair
Everyone on the streets had known that. Dell had known this from the START. The patent lawyers for Dell ALSO knew this. What is surprising is that the USPTO knew this.
This article is tagged "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense", but U.S. trademark law is typically endowed with a little more common sense (a little) than copyrights and patents, the other major areas of IP law. For example, how trademarks can only be held so long as they're actually in use. Compare this to copyrights applying for the life of the author plus seventy years; as a result, abandonware sites can and often are prevented from providing software titles years after the publishers have ever tried to make them available for a profit, or at all.
I expected that Dell would lose this ridiculous trademark bid and I'm pleased that the USPTO acted appropriately. Nonetheless, I'm sure that my fellow Slashdotters will be all too happy to expose my ignorance by providing plenty of counterexamples of trademark-related idiocy.
If it were up to transmarker freaks they would copyright every word comes out of our mouth.
Even veals have more autonomy!
I live in Illinois and several friends have been threatened by Monsanto over their crops having illegal plants. They tell us that if we buy Monsanto's seed we won't have to worry about being sued, but if we don't, "something could happen, these plants can spread, and you won't be legal". They make it sound like the burden is on the farmers to ensure their crops don't "infringe" rather than Monsanto making sure their modified product can't spread.
Posting anonymously because I don't care to be sued.
A Caddyshack reference on Slashdot, I'm impressed.
That might have sounded sarcastic but it wasn't, one of my favorite movies.
HP lost it's bid to trademark "Personal Computer".
It is just possible that Dell tried this to keep anyone from trademarking "Cloud Computing". Not that I think it is likely but by losing this trademark it will set a precedent that the term is not trademarkable. Just a spurious thought.
I think that Dell got the ruling they wanted. This was a preemptive move. Now, they have prevented anyone else from trademarking 'cloud computing'.
A purely defensive move.
If only this worked with patents.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
If you want to know more about how genetic modification makes extortion against farmers possible, see the movie, "The Future of Food" .
... a look at something we might not
want to see: Monsanto, Roundup, and Roundup-resistant seeds, collectively
wreaking havoc on American farmers and our agricultural neighbors around the
world."
The movie is about a plan of a big corporation, Monsanto to get control over the food supply, using its patented genetically powerful weed-killer Roundup, and patented seeds that are resistant to the weed-killer.
This is how Monsanto does it: Monsanto patented and sells a genetically modified versions of normal food crops. Inevitably, some of those plants spread and begin to grow in another field near where they were planted. The corporation then sues the farmer in that field for patent infringement. Amazingly, the courts find in favor of Monsanto, even though the farmer had no involvement in the spread of Monsanto's genetically modified plants; it is the nature of plants to spread.
The farmer either begins to buy genetically modified seed from Monsanto, or loses his or her farm. Then the same situation happens again, around that farm.
The Future of Food is a 2004 documentary film which makes an in-depth investigation into unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly made their way into grocery stores in the United States for the past decade.
The Telluride Daily Planet wrote, "This stylish film is
The film reports the legal action against a number of farmers in North America by Monsanto. The defendant of the Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser case is interviewed.
"If you eat food, you need to see The Future of Food", wrote Newstarget.com.
The film was written and directed by Deborah Koons Garcia, and produced by Catherine Lynn Butler and Deborah Koons Garcia. You can view an interview of Ms. Garcia produced by The Massachusetts School of Law: The Future of Food: What Every Person Should Know.
to patent "Online Shitting".
well. apparently the patent office hates innovation.
Read radical news here
Isn't it sad that, for the first time in it's history, the USPTO has finally done something right an its only affect is to save Dell some embarrassment down the line when the business community recognizes "Cloud Computing" as the useless marketing buzzword, as the tech community already has.
just got a promo code for GoGrid which is $100 in free credit. Good to put up a couple servers to try it out. Promo code is 'GGED'
Josh
You can always trademark "Cloud Cloudedness" and then sue people when they look clouded (confused).
I promise this will be the last column where I moan and groan about the folly of so-called "cloud computing." Personally, I think everyone should put their collective eggs in the cloud-computing basket, because that means I'll win when the cloud goes down.
Let's just summarize the events of the past few weeks. The Google cloud apps go lights-out for 90 minutes. The entire Internet is hacked and shut down in Georgia during the Georgia-Russia showdown. Various people using Google apps get their accounts killed because of bogus accusations that they are spammers.
In the meantime Microsoft blows up Microsoft Money and will not sell it as a shrink-wrap product anymore, instead putting the software package on the Microsoft cloud. It's all part of the "software as a service" scheme.
Let's look at the basic reasons why cloud computing stinks.
1) Performance issues. I don't care if you have 30-megabit-per-second service--you'll get flaky performance from most online apps, especially if they're popular. Always remember that your online speed is only as good as the speed at which data is coming at you: The application server may be swamped, and the various nodes along the route could become clogged, too. Nothing is ever as fast as the machine sitting on top of (or beneath) your own desk.
2) Software is software. People tend to forget that software is NOT a service; the whole cloud scheme is a scam to lock users into a single product and somehow extract more money from them. Aren't these companies making enough profit by selling 35-cent DVDs for $500?
3) Dependency problems. What happens to you and your business when suddenly your account is closed by a fickle vendor who decides that you are a spammer or your bill has been delinquent once too often? One thing's for sure, there will be nobody to call--and if there is, they[[those people? better]] will be in Bangalore and useless. And of course, how many tech companies even stay in business that long? What happens if they fold?
4) Cyber-terrorism. What happens if the net is attacked and your entire cloud world is gone for days and days? It just happened in the Republic of Georgia, and it can probably happen anywhere.
5) The Internet is ill suited for this purpose. The Internet--a network of networks--was never designed as a client-server architecture for general applications. Yes, it can obviously be used for this, but it's already swamped with too much data now. What will the cloud load look like if cloud computing becomes the future?
6) Kills innovation. Ask yourself why the heck will we need six-core, high-performance chips if the cloud takes over everything?
7) Reverses individual control. If you look at the history of computers--from big iron, government-financed projects to distributed computing to desktop/personal computing--the trend has been consistently toward individual empowerment. This has meant personal control within a self-contained environment. Cloud computing overtly reverses this trend. It is not self-contained and does not empower the individual, but instead makes the individual dependent and subservient. Thus, in the strictest sense of trend analysis, it is simply counter-revolutionary and a loser by any definition. From my perspective it's just another gimmicky idea with a cool name that is doomed to failure until it is redefined completely.
Numerous people will tell you that you are already doing client-server "cloud" computing, because the Net is used for e-mail, and you go to Amazon for books or you use Google to search for Web sites. Google is a client-server "cloud" app, no?
These are specious arguments, since everything you do online involves another computer. And these uses cited by cloud-computing boosters are for information-retrieval purposes, tasks done online as client-server apps because there is no alternative whatsoever to these mechanisms. If you had a Google-size multi-petabyte cache of the entire Net on your local machine, I suspect you'd search it directly rather than go