Netbooks Popular Enough For a C&D From Psion

Kevin C. Tofel writes "After watching the netbook industry explode from nothing to 14 million sales in year, the time is right for Cease & Desist letters. Psion, a UK computer company that years ago sold a small sub-notebook called a netBook, is starting to protect the term. At least one netbook enthusiast site received a C&D for using the 'netbook' term and others are sure to follow. The site was given three months to stop using the term. Ironically, it isn't the enthusiast sites that coined the popular term. In the spring of 2008, Intel dubbed these devices netbooks to help define a market for their low-powered Intel Atom CPU."

Comments

Jerks.

[ScrewMaster]

Makes me ashamed that I used one of their handheld models as the configuration tool for an industrial data acquisition system I used to sell. Lawyers are going to get this civilization so wrapped up in red tape that progress is impossible.

Re:Jerks.

[bmo]

Hey uh, unlike patent and trademark trolls, apparently Psion are still using the trademark, which they did come up with on their own before anyone else.

The only jerks here are you and your knee.

--
BMO

Re:Jerks.

[DigiShaman]

Lawyers are going to get this civilization so wrapped up in red tape that progress is impossible.

Uh DUH!!! That's the whole fucking point. It's called solidification of power for a reason. Lawyers are the new Lords of today. Only they can control what the serfs may or may not do.

Re:Jerks.

[MindlessAutomata]

But they didn't protect it until now.

Re:Jerks.

[ScrewMaster]

Maybe ... but I didn't call you any bad names. So I guess this qualifies you for jerkhood as well.

Re:Jerks.

[base3]

No they're not--they used to use it, and it's a sufficiently generic term that they're going to lose their trademark anyway (except for maybe the sort of camel-case variation). From the summary (emphasis mine)

that years ago sold a small sub-notebook called a netBook

Re:Jerks.

[Just Some Guy]

it's a sufficiently generic term that they're going to lose their trademark anyway

How do you figure? I'd never heard the word before Intel started tossing it around. It might be generic now, but I imagine that's one of their arguments in the suit.

Re:Jerks.

[larry bagina]

Read that again. This time with emphasis on the words jerk and knee.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Lawyers, in the end, don't build bombs and guns. Engineers do. Guess who's gonna win if lawyers get too uppity?

Re:Jerks.

[frosty_tsm]

Maybe there wasn't a need until now.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, the first thing I thought when intel started using the word was "Huh? did they buy psion"?

Though I'm in Europe where Psion for a long time was where Palm was in the US in the PDA market. Maybe psion are/were much better known over here. Symbian used in many, many phones is also a direct descendant of the EPOC32 OS that the Psion netbook ran.

Re:Jerks.

[KDR_11k]

Their loss, a trademark that becomes a generic term is pretty much lost.

Re:Jerks.

[LordLucless]

The people who can afford to pay engineers and the material used to make said weapons? (AKA, lawyers)

Re:Jerks.

[berend botje]

Tell that to the Coca Cola company.

Re:Jerks.

[ScrewMaster]

Read that again. This time with emphasis on the words jerk and knee.

Yeah ok. Too much Bailey's in my coffee (hey it is Christmas Eve here.)

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a double entendre.

Re:Jerks.

[Blakey Rat]

Cool people call them "Liliputers" anyway. http://www.liliputing.com/

Re:Jerks.

[jonbryce]

Cola is a generic term. Coke and Coca Cola are not.

Re:Jerks.

[decoy256]

Riiiight... it's the LAWYERS' fault... and it has nothing to do with people who just like to bitch and moan and want something for nothing.

Re:Jerks.

[base3]

Seems a pretty natural compound of "net" and "notebook" and thus generic. I'd never even heard of the Psion product until they came out of the woodwork with their claims after the term was in wide use as a generic diminutive notebook intended to mainly access network resources.

Re:Jerks.

[Gerald]

Not publicly. My experience has been:

1) Notice (or be notified of) a copyright or trademark offense.

2) Try to contact the company.

3) Get a reply from person 1 who:

    a) Doesn't have the power to fix anything.

    and/or

    b) Doesn't care.

4) Go back and forth with person 1 for a few months.

5) Deal with person 2..n who:

    a) Took over for person n-1 when they:

        i) Quit.
        ii) Went on vacation or maternity leave.

    b) Is person n-1's supervisor or someone from a completely different department in another time zone (and who can't change anything or doesn't care).

This goes on for several months until I send an angry certified letter to the president of the company or hand the matter over to my lawyer.

It's quite possible that Psion are a gaggle of jerks. It's also possible that they've been trying to get this resolved privately with no joy.

Re:Jerks.

[aesiamun]

Tell that to the south where you can order an orange coke or a grape coke or a mountain dew coke...

Re:Jerks.

[MindlessAutomata]

That's not how it works.

Re:Jerks.

[tverbeek]

Psion used to be a wonderful company with innovative software and hardware engineering, and excellent customer service. Back when the Sharp Wizard and Casio BOSS were the (dismal) state of the art in pocketable computers, they leveraged their expertise in industrial data-collection devices to produce a vastly superior (but inadequately marketed) handheld computer called the Series3. The rock-solid software they developed was the basis for the Symbian OS that runs so many smartphones today. I was a very pleased user and promoter of the Series3 and its successor the Revo/Mako, which I nursed along for years after they stopped making them, since no other solution available (e.g. Palm, WinCE, RIM) was as powerful and easy to use. (I finally gave up and got an iPod Touch earlier this year.) And as a matter of fact, they did create one of the first "netbooks" as we know them today (a Symbian-based device which they called... the "netBook") well before Asus et al did.

But the netBook is no more... and the same can be said of the Psion I just described.

Re:Jerks.

[tzot]

Thank you for providing an example of common logic which seems to be very, very rare on slashdot.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I live in the South, the home of Coca Cola actually (Atlanta) and I have never heard anyone (in the 16 years I've been here) use the phrase Mountain Dew Coke. Haven't actually heard orange coke or grape coke either, usually orange/grape soda or orange/grape cola or orange/grape drink. Southerns actually use Coke to mean Coca Cola, everything else is just soda.

Re:Jerks.

[Just Some Guy]

Seems a pretty natural compound of "net" and "notebook" and thus generic.

"Coca-Cola" seems like a pretty natural compound of "coca" and "cola", but good look getting that one invalidated.

"Netbook" is clearly an invented word, even if its etymology is obvious. There are millions of trademarks that you and I haven't heard of that are perfectly valid and legitimate, and it sounds like this is one of them.

Re:Jerks.

[Carlos Laviola]

What progress? It's just a catchy name.

Re:Jerks.

[BasilBrush]

I used to have Psion Netbook. Pretty much the same idea as "netbooks now". Similar proportions, very modest tech spec, can add apps, but mostly intended to be used with the built in apps, much cheaper than a laptop.

But they were about 8 years too early to market. And they didn't sell many.

They don't currently have a netbook but thay probably see that now is the right time to resurrect the idea and call it the Psion Netbook again. And to do that they need to and have a perfect right to prevent others from using their trademark.

Everyone who says the concept and the name is obvious, wasn't paying attention back in the years when Psion was first working on this stuff. Not only was it not obvious, most couldn't at that time see it was a valid market - it was too different.

Re:Jerks.

[BenLeeImp]

http://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats/total-county.html The terms seem to be very region-dependant.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers working _for themselves_ don't quite need to pay themselves.

And someone planning to kill a few legal parasites won't be too worried about just taking raw materials rather than paying for them - Greater good after all. Anyway, the nontech-human monetary system, like the nontech-human legal system, is a mere convention. Kill too birds with one stone.

Re:Jerks.

[hairyfeet]

Personally I never understood why they weren't called Webbooks myself. After all there are plenty of things to do on the net like gaming and HD streaming that these little underpowered laptops would just suck at, whereas if you say the web to most folks they are going to think of web surfing and web mail, which is what I bet the vast majority of the netbook users are doing with them anyway. So if this bunch wants to have their little fit over the name I say fine, let them have it. We should just switch to calling them webbooks which IMHO is a more accurate description anyway.

Re:Jerks.

[kaatochacha]

It does have everything to do with people who like to bitch and moan and want something for nothing. Of course, they're also called lawyers (Rimshot)

Re:Jerks.

[Teun]

Please don't confuse the corporate (law) world with Slashdot.

Re:Jerks.

[Beardo the Bearded]

Since these light laptops aren't using NNTP or FTP, why not just call them "web-books"?

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Swift reference.

Re:Jerks.

[Khyber]

Mountain Dew is made by Coca Cola, so that makes sense, the others do not.

Re:Jerks.

[bretticus]

Umm... Mountain Dew is made by Pepsi.

Re:Jerks.

[bretticus]

I think the gp is technically right, as I've never heard the phrase "Mountain Dew Coke." What I have heard is drinks like Mountain Dew being referred to as a "coke" just as one would refer to it as a "soda" in places like the northeast. Sodas are generally referred to as "cokes" here in the South. Personally, I think both "coke" and "pop" are stupid -- just say "soda."

Re:Jerks.

[sortius_nod]

Unfortunately this is another case of someone not knowing what the hell is going on.

No knee jerking there, they don't make the netBook anymore.

While they own the trademark, unfortunately they haven't acted on something that's now a colloquial term for a small ultra-portable notebook.

They had their chance years ago to enforce their trademark, they dropped the ball really. It would be like Johnson & Johnson banning the use of the term Band-Aid for non-Band-Aid products. It's become part of our language and a term more than a trademark.

If anything, Psion could capitalise on this by letting the term become ingrained in society and releasing a true "netBook". Consumers who didn't know better would just buy it.

Unfortunately this really stinks of trademark trolling.

Re:Jerks.

[base3]

We'll see. Coca-Cola's been aggressively defended over a hundred year period, and this was used as the name for a device that hasn't seen any marketing for a number of years and whose holder only became interested in it when it seemed like there might be money to be made from its having become a generic term.

Re:Jerks.

[base3]

If there were marketing a product now, I'd have some sympathy for them. What's more likely than that they have a product in wait is that someone from the empty husk of Psion saw an opportunity to litigate the trademark and perhaps bring in some cash. Thankfully, trademarks that become generic terms become invalid.

Re:Jerks.

[ivucica]

Netbook sounds way cooler than webbook.

Not to mention "certain" people might associate it with "certain" phenomenon that predates HTTP+HTML in being called "web" by several hundred years, at least.

Re:Jerks.

[petermgreen]

Psions in general were indeed nice machines

For the netbook though I would point out that there were both wince machines (e.g. the hp journada) and ultraportable laptops (e.g. the toshiba libretto) arround at the same time in similar form factors.

IMO the modern netbook fulfills two niches
1: those who want an ultraportable laptop to run thier standard software on the move (the psion netbook couldn't do this as it used an arm processor and epoc)
2: those who want a machine for mobile internet (which didn't really exist in any decent form when the psion netbook came out).

This leaves me wondering who exactly the psion netbook was aimed at.

Re:Jerks.

[logjon]

I hereby take those termed "netbooks" and dub them "subnotebooks." Next order of business.

Re:Jerks.

[BasilBrush]

Psion isn't an empty husk. They are marketing lots of products now. Just not into the consumer market. They do industrial mobile computers.
www.psion.com

Thankfully, trademarks that become generic terms become invalid.

Not true. Coke, Hoover, Band-Aid, Frisbee, Xerox, Tupperware, etc are used by people generally to describe a class of products. And yet the trademarks still belong to the companies that originated them. They can prevent over companies from using them.

Even if what you said was true, the generic use of the term Netbook isn't that old (it only seems so in internet time). Psion certainly haven't waited too long to defend their trademark.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

mental note: invent mountain dew-flavored cocaine, then market exclusively in the south.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

The term "a coke" in the south refers to colas. If you order a cherry coke you will get a cherry flavored cola or a mix of cherry soda and cola. If you order an orange coke...

Re:Jerks.

[base3]

Interesting info about Psion--sounds like they have shifted to software rather than hardware and thus are below the radar (and not currently manufacturing a netbook). The examples you cite (Coke et al) haven't become generic terms because they were continuously and vigorously defended over long periods of time (over 100 years in the case of Coke). The word netbook had not been so defended for eight or so years, an eternity in this industry. While I suppose Psion's sudden awakening that there might be gold in that thar trademark might be sufficient to convince a jury in a trademark lawsuit, my (admittedly lay) opinion is that it's just another generic term now and it's too late.

Re:Jerks.

[ScrewMaster]

Since these light laptops aren't using NNTP or FTP, why not just call them "web-books"?

Nah. Make it protocol agnostic ... call them "Interbooks".

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers don't do anything without clients. Trust me, nearly all lawyers wish you would all blow yourselves up instead of blaming us for your petulant squabbling.

Re:Jerks.

[Khyber]

Oops, you're right, I'm thinking surge. Damnit.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been confused about how to pronounce this company's name. Is it correctly pronounced "Pisr" or is it "Pissdon." I think a proper replacement name for small network enabled notebooks should be titled as "4QITSMINEs" notebooks to help suggest it doesn't belong to another. In use they'll be known with enhanced speed as "4QUIKs" pronounced as 4_Q_Quik.

Re:Jerks.

[zippthorne]

Uh.. at least Xerox and Kleenex did, for a time, lose their trademarks. Somehow they got them back. I'm a little mystified as to how that works, exactly. It is something that even Google is afraid of, though, or they wouldn't make a huff about people verbing their name.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Moaning, everyone.
I've got but one massage:
Marry Xmas!

Re:Jerks.

[Phoghat]

That's because NOW is when the revenue stream is in the crapper and they've got to get a little sumthin' sumthin'.

Re:Jerks.

[Xrikcus]

Or in the UK where the terms "coke" and "cola" are synonymous. If anything, cola is simply not used. You go in and say "A coke please" and the staff have to say "Is Pepsi ok?" and then you just look at them as if they're crazy. Why would Pepsi not be ok?

Re:Jerks.

[mollymoo]

You don't know how to pronounce Psion? The p is silent, as in the swimming pool.

Re:Jerks.

[jabuzz]

It's English and it is a ps, so the p is silent and it pronounced "sion"

Of course I remember Psion when they where producing games for Sinclair Research machines.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

That shouldn't be too hard since mountain dew doesn't have any flavor.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Netbook, NetBook, netBook, netbook, NETBOOK, etc
Netbook, NetBook, netBook, netbook, NETBOOK, etc
Netbook, NetBook, netBook, netbook, NETBOOK, etc

It is a generic term. When I started reading the write-up, I initially figured they were going after on the basis of a submarine patent. Instead they are trying to claim rights to the generic term netbook. Sorry, whatever your company's name is, but netbook aren't yours. It may have been once, but you sat on the sidelines for the past year while it became the clear, generic term for referring to these small notebook computers with screens too small for any mortal to use.

My captcha is apt: remorse. I am betting they have remorse for not enforcing whatever IP they may have had at the appropriate time. It's too late now. The public owns this term as a generic moniker for these types of devices.

Netbook, NetBook, netBook, netbook, NETBOOK, etc
Netbook, NetBook, netBook, netbook, NETBOOK, etc
Netbook, NetBook, netBook, netbook, NETBOOK, etc

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a :500k: wouldn't have heard of Psion, but they used to be a very large company that developed many many of the technologies and concepts that we use today - from Symbian, to the netbook form factor.

Fact is, they have a trademark on the term, and they got it a very long time ago, at a time when such a compound might not have been so obvious.

Re:Jerks.

[hattig]

And when was the first time you heard the term "netbook" apart from Psion? The netbook was well publicised at its launch, although it was too early. The PSion 5 series was more popular, but Psion sat back on their laurels a little with that design and lost the advantage.

Anyway, back to the term 'netbook' and when you heard it recently.
Not 4 years ago.
Most likely not 3 years ago.
Maybe 2 years ago, when Intel started talking about their plans for small systems, but at the time they were more interested in MIDs.
The EeePC came out 18 months ago ... and was it called a netbook back then?

You're thinking in internet time, not legal time. See a post above above for how such things could have proceeded once the term netbook started being used recently. I wouldn't be so certain that the term is 'generic' legally, nor that the trademark protection is late.

Re:Jerks.

[arkane1234]

I've lived in various locations on the east coast of America, and on the west now. I've been asked that question quite alot, so it's not UK specific by any far shot.

Re:Jerks.

[lazybeam]

I live with a guy who loves Coke and hates Pepsi. Whenever he has to buy a drink from a Pepsi shop he ends up just getting bottled water instead, as he can't stand the Pepsi range. So Pepsi is not always ok!

(Someone above said Mountain Dew is make by Coke -- WTF?)

Re:Jerks.

[CAIMLAS]

Because anyone who was paying attention to such things 8-10 years ago (when the first big 'ultra portable' surge hit the industry) will likely be able to tell you who sold the 'netbook' as easily as they'll be able to tell you that Psion makes such things.

Personally, while I think they've got a valid claim on this one, that should have taken it up a year or so back (and maybe they did). However, I also think they don't have much of a claim on the term, because the term really -is- a pretty generic and widely used term now, and I don't think it's because Intel popularized it - it's a pretty common-sense name for the devices, as that is/will be their primary use by most users, and in fact, what they're well suited for (ironically, unlike the Psion's namesake).

Re:Jerks.

[CAIMLAS]

Psion didn't really sell/market their devices over here, from what I recall. They were, at best, hard to come by and little known - stuff like the Jornadas and Palms dominated the market, with not much in between. Every once in a while you'd see them in the back pages of a business supply catalog or the like at discount prices. I do remember the Diamond Mako, which was a clone of the Psion Revo, was marketed here for a while, but it was done weakly and a couple years after the device's debut (costing about $90 shipped, IIRC - I picked one up because I like the form factor).

Re:Jerks.

[base3]

I agree with you that this is a matter of the difference between Internet time and legal time. If Psion manages to get a jury composed of people without much technical inclination who will perceive the several years that netbook was unused by the holder and the couple of years it was used as generic term before Psion's sharks smelled blood and money, they have a chance. Then Psion will become known as trademark abuser, bloggers will use the term anyway, and corporations will come up with another term to work around the judgment.

Re:Jerks.

[tverbeek]

I thought the Psion netBook was rather clearly aimed at the latter niche; didn't it come with Opera pre-installed? It wasn't as good at the job as the current crop of netbooks, but that was largely the state of the tech at the time.

Re:Jerks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I think that thinking a colloquialism is stupid and expecting other regions to conform to your own is stupid.

When you say soda around my grandmother, she thinks of soda water. I grew up where drinks like Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Mt. Dew were called soda. I've been living in a region where they're called pop for the last eight or ten years. I tend to use "pop" and "soda" interchangeably. Lately I tend to more often say pop.

Re:Jerks.

[KlaymenDK]

What he said.

Psion used to be way, way smarter in method and product than its contemporary Palm (while MS, Sharp, RIM, and other current-day competitors were either not born yet or just plain hopeless). I too loved my Revo until it died; my brother is still using his Series 5mx'es -- after he's tried a few smartphones. That's quite a testament.

It really is a shame they did not see the mind- and market share of, say, RIM; in my humble opinion they really had a worthy product. (I wonder if, at the core, it's really just a failure of marketing?) Their present form, with the Symbian mobile OS, really cannot show the full potential, the smartphone is simply not a proper enough mobile computing device.

I wonder what would happen if Psion brought out a new Series 5 today, retooled with modern materials? It might be awesome on the same level and in an entirely different way that the iPhone is.

"Organizer"

[bittmann]

Next thing you know, they'll sic their lawyers on folks selling "organizers".

Re:"Organizer"

[cheftw]

Next thing you know, they'll sic[sic] their lawyers on folks selling "organizers".

In case you don't get it I promise it's funny

Re:"Organizer"

[MrWeelson]

Hurrah! I use an 'organiser' I'm safe... Bwa ha ha haaaaaa....

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[raburton]

> Honestly, does anyone know? This is just stupid and it completely inhibits progress.

Patents maybe, but how on earth does a trademark stop progress?

And for that matter what wrong with trademarks? Sure, in this case they aren't doing a lot with the brand, but they coined the term, registered it properly years ago and used it for products that these new ones are very similar to. The potential for confusion is there, especially if psion might be planning on making further use of their brand.

This appears to be trademark law working as it's designed to, so while this is an interesting story, it doesn't seem like one we should all be whining about.

It's really Psion's trademark

[Bruce Perens]

If you search here for the term "Netbook", 18 entries come up, one of which is a live trademark assigned to Psion. It's interesting that neither Intel nor the various manufacturers and retailers marketing computers under the term "netbook" took the trouble to do this simple web search.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess we'll just have to call them by what they were called once before:

Plamtops or Subnotebooks. I always found the moniker "netbook" to be a rather awkward term. Too many people still ask what a netbook is when I show it to them and they ask me what it is. I say "Netbook", that is met with blank stares.

Subnotebook accurately describes what it is but has the added benefit of being immediately understood.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

Of which, one of those dead entries was a trademark for a surprisingly similar thing, intended for the K-12 market...

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[EdotOrg]

"Subnotebook accurately describes what it is but has the added benefit of being immediately understood."

Correct on the first part, incorrect on the second. You may be too close to the technology, but Average Joe (plumber or not) would respond with a blank stare if asked about a "subnotebook".

What, is that the part underneath the regular notebook?

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Just Some Guy]

I heard a lot of people throwing around Ultra-Mobile PC, or UMPC.

Up next: what do you call tiny, flash-based USB drives?

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh, it's obviously a notebook specially designed for use on submarines.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[ScrewMaster]

Plamtops or Subnotebooks.

Would they be running PlamOS?

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

A: "What's that?"

B: "A netbook."

A: "Oh. What's a netbook?"

B: "This."

A: "Oh. What's that?"

(A gets beaten to death with a netbook.)

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[jonbryce]

Most people I know call them Memory Sticks, even though they are nothing like the things Sony make.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[hguorbray]

thumb drives is the popular name for usb sticks

I still think of drives as a rotating media, but it seems the term will transfer to new media thanks to SSHDs and so forth

Sony's memory sticks lost out when the thumbdrives hit 1GB and got real cheap and were further undermined by the widespread adoption of flash by cell and camera manufacturers -plus I'm not sure they were adopted by many 3rd parties

-I'm just sayin'

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[ishobo]

I think Psion has not used netbook in trade for over five years. If true, the mark is considered abandoned.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[yog]

I agree with the parent. Psion PLC previously developed a product called the "netBook", although it is no longer in production. However a sister company or umbrella company "Psion Teklogix" appears to have a current product that uses the "netBook" name. Maybe someone else can tease out exactly what these companies have in common, but at any rate the term appears to be a valid trademark that is in current use.

Unfortunately for them, it has also become a common term and they may have trouble holding on to it. A similar situation occurred in the late 1980s for those old enough to remember: a PC manufacturer trademarked the term "Tower" as in Tower PC, an upright form factor for (what we used to call) IBM compatibles. The term quickly spread and the manufacturer threatened to sue several other PC makers. I remember that one in particular changed their product from "Tower 286" to "Power 286". (Yeah, I'm old :)) Needless to say, "tower" stuck as a common term and that company lost control of it.

This is not as egregious as someone trying to co-opt the term "google" or "xerox" for commercial gain, even though these words have nonetheless become household terms. Actually, about 20 years ago Xerox tried to get their name back by warning people not to say "xerox" as a verb, especially when it wasn't actually a Xerox machine. But they failed, just as they failed in several other wrong headed pursuits such as suing Apple for its GUI and suing Palm for using Graffiti.

I think the moral high road is simply to keep on innovating and don't worry so much about empty words. I'd love to see Psion come out with some innovative products; they've always been a good company. As a commenter put it on the article site, R&D is better than C&D.
 

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[ishobo]

A division of the same company. The Psion of old is no more. They sold or closed most of their assests and bought Teklogix. Their netbook was EOLed in 2003 but it looks like they are still providing service for the device. That means the mark is still being used in trade.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, about 20 years ago Xerox tried to get their name back by warning people not to say "xerox" as a verb, especially when it wasn't actually a Xerox machine.

For a Good Time (tm), go to the Adobe site and read their crap about how their products should be most reverentially referenced.

This picture was photoshopped -- OMG-NO -- you're supposed to say some shit like -- This picture was processed using Adobe (tm) Corporation's PhotoShop (tm) for Windows (tm) Image Processing Tool (tm). Fuck that shit -- I psed the picture. They just want to hijack your mouth as an unpaid, unwilling representative of their marketing apparatus.

It's as bad as those marines who insist on capitalizing marines and "correct" anyone who says ex-marine with their haughty "There are former marines; there is no such thing as an ex-marine". C'mon guys -- spit out the Kool-Aid (tm) -- that shit is noyhing but marketing weaselry. Just like those who can't say, "I was in the marines". Oh no, they have to recite the whole litany -- "I was in the united states marine corps". Well duhhh, I've met Mexican marines, but they aren't the first organization that jumps to mind when I hear the word. Stand down with the bullshit, guys.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[davidsyes]

To harken back to the crazy early 90's "ette", call it:

- bookette
- subette
- note-ette
- lappette

Or, even better, Sub-Netbook...

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[petermgreen]

thumb drives is the popular name for usb sticks
Maybe it is in your circle of aquaintences, arround here (EEE deparment, university of manchester) most people seem to call them pendrives with flash stick, memory stick and USB stick all being fairly common. I don't think i've ever met anyone in person who uses the name thumdrive.

Sony's memory sticks lost out when the thumbdrives hit 1GB and got real cheap and were further undermined by the widespread adoption of flash by cell and camera manufacturers -plus I'm not sure they were adopted by many 3rd parties
I was always under the impression that the only reason people bought sony memory sticks was because they had other sony hardware (camera, music player, aibo etc)that relied on them. IIRC thier price per megabyte was always higher than other flash formats (CF, SM, SD, XD, USB sticks and so on)

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

The company which made Tower's was NCR. The Tower was a series of Unix computers, one of the most successful early mass market Unix systems, they ran variants of System V, and never PC compatible, mainly because they had Motorola 680x0 processors.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Wiseleo]

And then there's the universally valid business model of being a trademark holder and licensing the use of mark... for...

???
P R O F I T!

Psion is doing everything right in defending their trademark and shouldn't be called a troll. I call these things subnotebooks. Sony calls them PictureBook (tm) by the way. I haven't even heard the term Netbook until a month or so ago.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no! It's a notebook that's in a sub sandwich!

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[Basje]

They did. In europe, both Fujitsu Siemens and MSI registered netbook trademarks of their own: amilo netbook and wind netbook. I'm sure they would have registered netbook if it wasn't already taken

However, many jurisdictions including Europe rule that a registered trademark has to be in genuine use. If it has not seen genuine use, it can be revoked (art 15 and 50 of Council Regulation (EC) No 40/94.

I suspect that is also the reason for the late C&D. This ground for revocation of a trademark can be repaired. However, there is usually a grace period (3 months for a Community Trademark, art. 50 CE 40/94). I would not be surprised to find that Psion started using the trademark again a little over three or six months ago. That would mean they had to wait until now to C&D without risk to their trademark.

NB: although I'm an IP lawyer in Europe, this is _not_ legal advise.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark

[the_womble]

Psion (made consumer and business PDAs) bought Netlogix (more industrial stuff), the original Psion business split into hardware (now defunct) and software (spun off into Symbian), leaving Psion Teklogix.

Its a cheddar thing

[thermian]

Cheddar, a class of cheese we all know, is in reality a particular type of cheese, from a particular location (not too far from where I live). Alas they didn't defend their mark, and now Cheddar is a generic term used to describe mostly low quality cheap cheese sold in vast amounts. Barely anyone has eaten 'real' Cheddar.

They tried to retrieve their mark from this widespread use by other manufacturers, but failed because they left it too long.

Thats what this is about, they want to retain their mark, its not about 'evil', if it were, then the real Cheddar makers are also evil, since this is a similar case. It may or may not be too late, but if they do nothing, they lose it anyway.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Anonymous Coward]

cheddar tends to stop me up, and then I end up dropping a deuce (or, as we say in Germany, a deutschmark) that threatens to tear my asshole wide asunder

creamy cheeses like real swiss, muenster, mozzarella, and limburger don't have that effect

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[larry bagina]

That's not really the same. The EU is big on protected designation of origin, for things like Champaign (sparkling wine), Cognac (brandy), Parmigiano (cheese), etc. Those, like Cheddar (cheese), are locations, not a phrase trademarked by an individual or company.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[berend botje]

However, they also invented the Psion 5mx, so that is minus one thousand evil points.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Arterion]

So what should people be calling cheddar cheese? A cheddar-style cheese? Or is that to say the only types of cheeses made in Cheddar is, in fact, cheddar cheese? What if a cheesemaker in Cheddar were to make swiss-style cheese? Would it properly be called "Cheddar Cheese" as well?

I think the term cheddar is for a style of cheese, with a particular flavor, not cheese from a particular place. And when you think about it, that makes a lot more sense.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Rigrig]

I still remember 'walkman' as being an example of 'how not to learn from your mistakes' (i.e. 'diskman').

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[MichaelSmith]

Cheddar, a class of cheese we all know, is in reality a particular type of cheese, from a particular location (not too far from where I live).

Cheddar is also much less obvious a term as "netbook".

Why? Cheddar is a real place. Netbook is a made up (and not very accurate) term.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[HiVizDiver]

Same thing with champagne, although it seems that makers from the actual region of Champagne have been a little more successful defending its marketing use as an exclusive right for that region only. Still, it is consistently misidentified in the common vernacular.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Chyeld]

I buy "chocolate candy". I buy "Chicago style", "St Louis style", "New York style", and even "California-style" pizzas, depending on my mood.

Most of the cheese I consume is actually labeled "processed cheese".

I don't see why, had Cheddar been protected, we couldn't have called the 'knock offs' something different.
 

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but in this case, sadly, they waited too long given how fast the tech market moves.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the cheese I consume is actually labeled "processed cheese".

Well, you just destroyed your credibility forever.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Xerolooper]

So you live near Somerset England. Cheddar That was an unfortunate example. It was brought into the common usage long before marketing was an issue.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[jpatters]

Anyone who hasn't tasted a genuine Vermont Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese hasn't tasted the best Cheddar cheese there is.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I was sold real Cheddar in Cheddar Gorge by an old crone. She said "it boits it daas". And she was right.

True story.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[value_added]

Anyone who hasn't tasted a genuine Vermont Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese hasn't tasted the best Cheddar cheese there is.

No doubt this coming from someone who hasn't tasted real Cheddar, knows little about making cheese, and even less about the care and feeding of cows. I'm sorry, but past the occasional one-off specialty cheeses coming from Vermont, or California, for that matter, all such cheese is a generic waxy food product.

The regrettable thing is that most such "cheese" is sold or marketed in a deceptive manner, typically with names protected elsewhere in such a way that misusing them would get you a visit from local cheesemakers if not a jail sentence, or worse, with the flags of countries where most residents would laugh off the association as absurd.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Belial6]

No, it isn't misidentified in the common vernacular. People using the common vernacular know exactly what they are saying when they say champagne. They are just ignoring lawyers and pretentious asses who want to take control of the language.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[quenda]

Cheddar, a class of cheese we all know, is in reality a particular type of cheese,

No it isn't - Cheddar is a place. That would be like the city of Hamburg trying to own the word "hamburger".

The French got away with stopping other people using the term "champagne" not put making a valid argument, but by using their power in the EC to blackmail other producers with trade restrictions.

We seem to forget the actual purpose of trademark laws - which is to stop a good being passed off as somebody else's, and protect a makers reputation. Do they really think people are buying netbooks thinking they are from Psion?

This is just as stupid as Palm-Pilot vs Pilot pens.

Re:Its a cheddar thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear.

America has produced many fine things, but cheese and beer are not among them. As the Economist said, to a European a glass of Bud is a glass of water ruined. The same more or less goes for the cheese.

The worst thing is that Americans still take the piss out of English food. People in glass houses...

I propose a new term:

[base3]

Notapieceofshitpsionbook

Re:I propose a new term:

[linuxwebadmin]

How about we choose a term _no_ company will want to patent, say small F**KING laptop? Written from my D*LL Mini 9. Merry Christmas. B

Easy solution

[nurb432]

When companies pull garbage like this, they are forced to close and their board personally fined into oblivion.

Re:Easy solution

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Actually it's not garbage, they own the Trademark and are entitled to protect it.

This is not some dodgy submarine "patent", it's well established Trademark law. Any commercial operation in the same situation would do the same. Even /.

Re:Easy solution

[larry bagina]

When companies pull garbage like this, they are forced to close and their board personally fined into oblivion.

It seems a little excessive to shut down intel just because they misappropriated another company's trademark....

Re:Easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You're behind on Slashdot groupthink.

We love Intel, because their chips are used to make high-quality Apple computers.

We hate Psion, because Symbian smartphones compete against the iPhone, and competing against Apple is BAD.

So, in conclusion, Psion's trademark should be thrown out (because they are BAD and hate Apple), they company should be destroyed, Symbian outlawed, and the employees enslaved.

Re:Easy solution

[ScrewMaster]

and the employees enslaved.

Nah ... too much work. Just line 'em up against the wall and shoot 'em.

Re:Easy solution

[ishobo]

Psion has nothing to do with Symbian. They closed their PDA business in the early 2000s and sold the remaining interest in Symbian to Nokia years ago.

Re:Easy solution

[MaxiCat_42]

Seeing as the lawyers represent the company, why not just line the lawyers up and shoot them?

Re:Easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to take the view they are a reasonable company. Possibly you do not remember Psion from their heyday. Anybody who owned an early Psion 5 handheld would. And would also remember how they tried to make the purchaser pay for rectification of their faulty products - right up until Trading Standards got involved. I formed a less than complimentary view of their business practices after that.

Hormel and Adobe

[Bananatree3]

Psion, welcome to the ranks of Hormel and Adobe...

You aren't going to pull this name from the clutches of the tech culture...Just like Spam and Photoshopping.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[icegreentea]

They still need to try. As stupid as this is, it's to be expected. Psion realistically does not have any chance of reclaiming exclusive use of the term netbook in regards to computers, and they know it. They're just doing it to go through the stupid steps of trademark law. Why the hell do you think they haven't sent C&Ds at Intel or Asus or any 'big' blog (Ars?). I mean, ASUS actively markets eeepcs as 'Netbooks' (see linky at the bottom). Psion is probably just throwing out some random C&Ds so when some greedy idiot shareholder or something complains about the trademark being violated, they can go 'well, we TRIED to protect it, but the courts ruled against us' at point at a couple random C&Ds.

http://eeepc.asus.com/global/product1002ha.html

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[sane?]

Actually they probably will win.

They coined the term many years ago, and its only recently (within this year) that people have started to use it for low powered intel boxes. Its the same market space and its likely they can claim that in the time between then and now they have been pursuing more discrete solutions.

Its a pity that this intel netbook crowd didn't learn more lessons from Psion about how to create workable small scale computers.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[LMacG]

How do you know that they haven't already been in contact with Intel or Asus? Perhaps when large corporations get a legal communication, they don't go running to their Wordpress installation, along with Twitter and Facebook, to post about how that other big bad company is being so mean to them.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Its a pity that this intel netbook crowd didn't learn more lessons from Psion about how to create workable small scale computers.

Indeed, I'm still using my Series 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5 daily.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[Magic5Ball]

How do you know that they haven't already been in contact with Intel or Asus?

We don't know that there has not been any contact about the topic, but we do no that if there has been contact, it is of no consequence so far, otherwise we'd see "Netbook used under license from Psion LLC" or similar text on documentation and announcements from Intel or Asus.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[jbolden]

They can win against "netbook" manufacturers. They can't win against websites using the term as it used in common speech. Worse, establishing the term has moved into a generic term for a whole class of computers would void their trademark.

Not only will they lose the lawsuit (assuming the site can afford to defend itself) but they will lose the trademark as well.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[Registered Coward v2]

Its a pity that this intel netbook crowd didn't learn more lessons from Psion about how to create workable small scale computers.

Even more so that Psion left the market and never really realized the potential for their products. I used a 5 for along time; great little device. There app suite was pretty decent, to teh point where you could get real work done on them.

One can only wonder what Psion would have today had they been able to continue developing the 5 and 7 series.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[Blakey Rat]

Its a pity that this intel netbook crowd didn't learn more lessons from Psion about how to create workable small scale computers.

Like... what?

Humor us Psion-ignorant people.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[Matt Perry]

Worse, establishing the term has moved into a generic term for a whole class of computers would void their trademark.

Not only will they lose the lawsuit (assuming the site can afford to defend itself) but they will lose the trademark as well.

First, if you would read the article, you would see that there is no lawsuit. All that has happened is that Psion has asked web site owners to stop using their trademark.

Second, both outcomes that you state above are highly unlikely. The term has hardly been in use for any length of time and cannot be genericized so easily. Klennex is still a trademark even though many people use it as a generic term for and brand of tissue paper.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[Epsillon]

OPL for a start. It was a surprisingly robust language back in the day, although when I created a stock control reporting app (the Psion dumped its data to a CSV file that was read into dBase for DOS - high tech shit indeed) in OPL on the Psion II (yeah, yeah, get off my lawn you damned kids) access to a UV EPROM eraser was almost mandatory... :o)

OK, I'm joking. I think it's more likely to be "not pretending it's something it isn't." Small sub-notebooks (and these are not a new idea- the Tosh Libretto was a fair example of the genre, although "cheap" from the SCC acronym was never something you could apply to a Libretto) are either woefully inadequate for anything more than a little web surfing, e-mailing and putzing around with a few productivity apps or just too small to be thermally stable and have decent battery life. I think the reason for the popularity of these devices right now has little to do with the form-factor, as we've established it is not new, but more the parallel proliferation of affordable mobile connectivity. Who the hell wants to lug about a full 7 or 8 lb notebook just to check the twits on twitter?

Psions were presented as a small, neat form-factor with a small, neat embedded OS that was useful for a small subset of what a larger machine could do and, more importantly, were ready for use right after you hit that power button and only required another press to go into almost full off (the RTC remained powered, the memory was, if I recall, non-volatile). They also had battery life that wipes the floor with anything about today; a Psion 3 ran for what seemed like ever on two AAs - providing the battery cover didn't fall off, the sight of batteries rolling off being a familiar one to Psion 3 users. Not sure about the 5mx as I never was fortunate enough to own one. The Psions, however, never pretended to be fully featured machines in small cases, something some of these "netbook" manufacturers are guilty of portraying their wares as and I think that was the GP's point. Why do we need a full Windows or Linpus install when something like the Asus ExpressGate (Splashtop) with a bit of storage would do just as well and be available far faster and less power hungry to boot? That's the sort of thing Psion (the original version) would have been more than likely to come up with had they progressed logically with what they were so good at and "netBook" would have been an ideal name for the thing as that's what you'd do with it: Open it, tweet on the bus describing the liver spots (one of which looks like Australia) on the back of the bald guy's head sitting in front of you, close it and get on with getting to wherever you're going. Sadly, (or, perhaps, luckily for the rest of us) it was not to be.

That said, this does sound to me more like "we missed the boat, so let's get some money off these bastards" chagrin than Psion actually wanting to use the mark again. They should be used to it by now; if The Register is to be believed, they missed quite a few boats.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[jbolden]

Matt --

Absolutely Klennex is a trademark. The question is how well it could be enforced in light of general usage. For example if Puffs sold "Puffs brand Kleenex" and not "Puffs brand facial tissue" would they lose? Until it is tested the trademark is iffy but so far Kleenex doesn't go nuts about people using it as a generic term since they see it as to their advantage.

As for the amount of time. That doesn't matter what matters is what people who use the term by it.

Finally I didn't say their was a lawsuit but the question is whether they could win one in terms of the website owners.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[KlaymenDK]

They also had battery life that wipes the floor with anything about today; a Psion 3 ran for what seemed like ever on two AAs - providing the battery cover didn't fall off, the sight of batteries rolling off being a familiar one to Psion 3 users. Not sure about the 5mx as I never was fortunate enough to own one.

FYI, the Series5 (5mx only differs in braws and brains) had a battery life of 2-3,5 weeks on a standard set of AA cells. If you had a spare set of hi-cap rechargeables, you could basically go into the bush for a month and never miss a blog entry ... that is, if wireless or blogs existed back then.

The battery cover was a long panel that sort of swivelled around the axis of the batteries; I've never tried, seen or heard of, a pair of Series5 batteries rolling off on their own.

Re:Hormel and Adobe

[Matt Perry]

For example if Puffs sold "Puffs brand Kleenex" and not "Puffs brand facial tissue" would they lose? Until it is tested the trademark is iffy but so far Kleenex doesn't go nuts about people using it as a generic term since they see it as to their advantage.

Trademark law goes back very far and there is a lot of existing case law. Since there is no other manufacturer of facial tissue using the term Kleenex other than the trademark holder, it's safe to assume that the claim to the trademark is strong and that any challengers would lose. Netbook is a very new term and I would bet that many people do not know what a netbook is. I read Slashdot regularly and I didn't know what a netbook was until I read this article. I had seen the term before and assumed, in regular Slashdot fashion, that it was a misspelling of notebook and had not been corrected by an editor.

Standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the mass media uses the term as a generic label, it is pretty difficult to retrieve it. Why is Psion not suing cnet, etc, for misusing the term? The cat is out of the bag, and was in fact most of the way down the street before they noticed. For a counterexample, see "Blackberry," who sued about the BlackJack phone for being too similarly named.

Re:Too late

[Magic5Ball]

Why is Psion not suing cnet, etc, for misusing the term? ... For a counterexample, see "Blackberry," who sued about the BlackJack phone for being too similarly named.

Asked and answered. There's presently no possibility that someone could buy a small computing device made by cnet thinking it was a product having the characteristics of a Psion netBook.

Re:Too late

[ishobo]

was in fact most of the way down the street before they noticed

Which is prefectly acceptable. You do not have to defend every trvial use of the mark. And it is difficult to defend the mark if you do not know of its use by others. The trademark holder has to be aware of the infringement and they believe it will lead to market confusion. If the holder has no idea of the infringement and it has been going on for several years, the mark is still valid and can be defended.

So... just curious:

[Penguinisto]

When do they start suing the Intel Corporation or Acer (one of whom had coined the term IIRC), and not the penny-ante hobbyist sites?

Ah - but I guess it's cheaper and easier to pick on the small fry first, eh?

Seriously - yes Psion has a real trademark on it, but what kind of screwball system do we all live in where (litigation-wise) the little guy gets it in the neck first?

/P

Re:So... just curious:

[rm999]

My guess is there will be no lawsuits, because they have a registered trademark. If there are any lawsuits, it would be the likes of Intel bullying Psion out of their actively-used trademark, not the other way around.

Re:So... just curious:

[internewt]

I think in situations like this, the attack lawyers start on the hobiests and little guys first as part of a bigger plan, or just readiness for if the fight gets big.

If they went straight after Intel then Intel would speak to its vast army of lawyers who are already on the staff (just like all big corps.). Those lawyers would soon find (for example - IANAL) that netbook is pretty generic and Psion haven't been protecting their trademark for years. Basically, the Intel lawyers would be able to put up a fight that will cost Psion money and they could lose totally too.

If Psion go for a few small guys, then the chances of them just submitted are much higher. If Psion then goes after Intel, Psion at least has some examples of them successfully defending their trademark. Psion would argue that the capitulation of the little guy was because the big guy was correct in his assertion of the trademark, and not of course because small-time hobbiests can't afford nor want to waste time defending their use of what they thought was just a portmanteau of network (or internet) and notebook.

Re:So... just curious:

[Registered Coward v2]

When do they start suing the Intel Corporation or Acer (one of whom had coined the term IIRC), and not the penny-ante hobbyist sites?

Ah - but I guess it's cheaper and easier to pick on the small fry first, eh?

Seriously - yes Psion has a real trademark on it, but what kind of screwball system do we all live in where (litigation-wise) the little guy gets it in the neck first?

/P

They have to protect the trademark; which means going after unauthorized use, no matter where it happens.

If they ignore the little guys the big guys will use that to argue the term has become a generic moniker for, well, Netbooks tm.

At least Psion appears to be reasonable and give people a some time to stop using their trademark.

Re:So... just curious:

[Duradin]

I wasn't aware psion was still in business. I thought the psion series went the way of the newton around the time of palm/handspring era. I'd never heard of a psion netBook. I'm not sure that level of non-advertising counts as actively used.

Re:So... just curious:

[couchslug]

The proper hobbyist reaction might be a serious hate-on for Psion.

The "hobbyists" aren't the ones who made their marketing decisions. Psion had a chance to stay relevant and blew it long ago by using WinCE and a non-x86 processor.
Those who fuck with "hobbyists" might note that hobbyists make purchase decisions at their day jobs. If a company pisses me off I'd go out of my way to to buy their stuff, recommend others seek alternative (without mentioning my ire), and in general refuse to support them.

Re:So... just curious:

[Matt Perry]

When do they start suing the Intel Corporation or Acer (one of whom had coined the term IIRC), and not the penny-ante hobbyist sites?

No one has been sued. All that's happened is a few web sites have received a letter that asks them to stop using the company's trademarked term. They also gave them one-fourth of a year to make the necessary changes. That's pretty generous.

Re:So... just curious:

[raynet]

I didn't know they had WinCE devices? I thought that their PDAs and netbook type of devices (Series 7 and netBook) used Symbian OS and ARM cpus. And using ARM was a great idea as it was more power efficient than pentiums etc at that time. My old Psion Series 7 with 133MHz ARM still easily lasts 13+ hours on single battery.

Re:So... just curious:

[Forbman]

Wow... my TRS 80 Model 100 runs for a week on 4 AA batteries.

Re:So... just curious:

[frglrock]

As already mentioned a couple of times, psion is still in business but they got out of the consumer market. They bought teklogix and only do industrial stuff these days (www.psion.com)

Having said that, I've read about this in a couple of places now and they apparently still provide support and accessories for the netBook and netBook pro so their actions do seem reasonable.

The netBook was their top of the line model at the time. They weren't really in the "organiser" class any more though as they distinctly resembled the netbooks of today. The psion series 7 was their flagship device in the former category, the netBook was a sub-notebook running Windows CE.

I would have really liked one at the time but they were astonishingly expensive.

Re:So... just curious:

[Anonymous Coward]

what kind of screwball system do we all live in where (litigation-wise) the little guy gets it in the neck first?

Welcome to humanity. You must be new here!

Re:So... just curious:

[KlaymenDK]

Oh, they're in business all right, but the stuff they make is more appropriate for the tool belt of a waiter or geologist than the suit pocket of an office worker -- which is really a shame. Oh, and their devices run Windows; what used to be Epoc now runs only on smartphones.

They aren't suing..

[Finallyjoined!!!]

It's just a Cease & Desist letter. They have also, reasonably IMHO, given them 3 months to stop using their Trademark.

Re:They aren't suing..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a Cease & Desist letter. They have also, reasonably IMHO, given them 3 months to stop using their Trademark.

This message is to inform you that you have 3 months to stop capitalizing words that don't need it.

Mack Book.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if Mack Truck published a coffee table book containing photos of trucks it built over the years and titled it the Mack Book. And then imagine if Apple sent them C&D letters because MacBook is an Apple product. How ridiculous would that be? Equally ridiculous to the difference between netbook and netBook. Notice the capital "B" in the latter. Clearly a product name. Notice how the former has become a simple word in common usage in the English language to refer to a whole class of sub-notebook computers. What the hell else are we supposed to call them? Teenie-tiny-notebook-computers-that-are-smaller-than-most-notebook-computers?

Re:Mack Book.

[Anonymous Coward]

Minilaptop? A small laptop? a legtop? There's nothing "net" about a netbook, it's just catchy and relates to the internet.

Re:Mack Book.

[atraintocry]

Imagine if someone tried to pretend that two computing devices having the same name was the same as a computing device and a stack of wood pulp sheets with some glue on the end.

Re:Mack Book.

[Belial6]

What to call them? How about something that is even remotely descriptive of what they are. I've always thought that netbook was a stupid name for a notebook computer anyway. What more does it have to do with the 'net' than any other notebook computer. How about we just call them notebooks, or laptops, since that is what they are. If you must have a special name for small notebook, how about paperback, lightbook, leafbook, featherbook, handheld, or anything that implies it is small. Net in no way does that.

Now, psion might be in the wrong for not defending the trademark earlier, but the name 'netbook' is definitely not an obvious name for a very small battery operated computer. Now if it was terminal, so it only worked when connected to a network, THEN the name netbook might be obvious.

Where is the violation?

[jbolden]

The term netbook is used in common speech to refer to a collection of a certain type of laptop. A bunch of websites are writing content using that term. They may be selling advertising, but they aren't netbook manufacturers. They can't tell websites not to use the term.

Psion doesn't get to regulate how a word is used in common speech only if competitors can use it. The websites can keep their content up, there is no violation.

Re:Where is the violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe you are wrong, it is about how they've been going about policing it in the first place. By not having defended it until now, they may not have much of a defense anymore. Everyone uses Photoshopped or shopped to talk about a manipulated image, but adobe has trademark on proper use of their product PhotoShop...

Trademarks are not verbs.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.

Trademarks are not nouns.

CORRECT: The image pokes fun at the Senator.
INCORRECT: The photoshop pokes fun at the Senator.

Always capitalize and use trademarks in their correct form.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.
INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.
INCORRECT: The image was Photoshopped.
INCORRECT: The image was Adobe® Photoshopped.
Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.

CORRECT: Those who use Adobe® Photoshop® software to manipulate images as a hobby see their work as an art form.
INCORRECT: A photoshopper sees his hobby as an art form. INCORRECT: My hobby is photoshopping.

And it continues

Re:Where is the violation?

[jbolden]

That's a good example but it seems to defend my point. Adobe is desperately trying to avoid the word "photoshop" becoming a verb for a type of photo manipulation or a noun for a type of image. That is exactly the problem Psion has, that this is happening (has happened) with netbook.

Now in Adobe's case most people who use the word photoshop still see it as deriving from or connected to the product. But sentences like

"I photoshopped off the redeye with iPhoto" are death to their trademark.

In any case even if you were to violate the above in an article, I can't see how Adobe can sue you.

Re:Where is the violation?

[Forbman]

Kind of makes a good long-term argument against product names that are either very unique (Kodak, Xerox) or too close to a functional description of the product, its functional domain, etc. Many of us in the US grew up (70's - 80's) taking our pictures to photo shops - little drive-through shacks, to have our pictures developed (or say "hi" to Chong). It was a clever hook by the Adobe folks, but look where it gets them now - it's too easily used as a "verb" and can turn into its own meme.

Another part of the problem is that English (at least, American english) is too flexible. Who knows what it would sound like if it had to be derived from Latin origins, or a squished-together katamari German word or abbreviation of it, etc?

But it just doesn't sound right to say, "I CGI'd the red-eye out with Photoshop".

Re:Where is the violation?

[jbolden]

Well that's exactly the point of trademarking. You want to pick product name which is distinct and then hope it doesn't become a word. For example you buy "Scotch brand clear plastic tape" so their is another word for "scotch tape".

Shove it :

[unity100]

ibm didnt try to prevent people from using PC as a generic term. psion, scion, scimition, noone else will be able to similarly.

excuse me, but you are totally stupid if you think you can fight languages. languages evolve beyond the call of law, you cant do zit about them. maybe 1/4 of the world uses the word 'f@ck', despite it being prevented from being used in a lot of places via laws.

netbook.

netbook.

i want to bu a netbook. NETBOOK.

sue me.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot hasn't taken action against Fat Boy Slim for use of Slashdot in his song "Slash Dot Dash"

Wikimedia Foundation hasn't taken action against "Zack and Wiki"

Users of Wankel engines in cars haven't taken action against the term to "wank".

Linus Torvalds hasn't taken action against Roesh for calling their products "Linux".

If we can't use "Netbook", how about "Laptot"?

[ahecht]

I never really liked the "Netbook" name all that much (especially since I use mine more for note taking and word processing, not surfing), and I think "Laptot" fits a whole lot better. Plus, since "Laptots" were African colonial troops in the service of France between 1750 and the early 1900s, it is unlikely to be trademarked.

Re:If we can't use "Netbook", how about "Laptot"?

[sensei moreh]

I've been using "laptot" since I purchased by Acer Aspire One back in August,, but was unaware of the prior usage. Guess I should have checked Wikipedia

Re:If we can't use "Netbook", how about "Laptot"?

[Anonymous Coward]

because then you sound like a pedophile. Either way you can't win.

Trademark vs. Patent, Psion

[hirschma]

Before you go and start crapping all over Psion, consider the way that patents and trademarks work. I think that a lot of folks here are applying what they know about one to the other. It is a common enough problem.

A patent is enforceable whether you decide to enforce it or not. So, if you decided to enforce it vs. one single company while many others were ripping you off, you could do that.

A trademark, however, becomes diluted if you either selectively enforce, or if you do not enforce it. In other words, if Psion continues to allow everyone to use the term, especially more public entities like websites, their trademark will quickly become diluted, unenforceable, and worthless.

It is pretty clear that Psion either intends to license the trademark, or to introduce a consumer line of what they'll call Netbooks. Or perhaps, license the trademark along with a number of related patents (I think that they patented some stuff relating to form-factor that would be useful in a, well, N/netbook.

In other words, they need to do this to make money from their own IP. Not so awful.

Is there a trademark registered on "Asshole"?

[erroneus]

I have to wonder if Psion has this trademark and whether or not they will sue me for calling anyone except them an asshole?

Re:Is there a trademark registered on "Asshole"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a trademark registered on "Asshole"?

Yes. It's registered to a Mr. erroneus aka UID: 253617.

What's wrong with "subnotebook" ?

[solios]

I mean, really. A subnotebook is smaller and lighter than a "standard issue" laptop - my 12" powerbook G4 would have been a great example of this a few years ago. Of course, "netbooks" are typically smaller than that - even smaller than the Apple Duo! - but they''re still ultimately Bonsai Laptops and in some configurations can be used for Actual Work.*

They're just wee. "netbook" to me has negative connotations - it rings up an image of a Sun Ray - a piece of hardware that's completely, entirely useless (too light to be a doorstop) without a network connection, from which is got everything. Including the OS.

Ahead of its time, the way things are going!

* I mean the kind of stuff that still drives Macbook Pro sales. Photoshop, Final Cut, etceteras. Yes, I know that a lot of Actual Work is done with emacs but you don't need processors, batteries, and video chipsets that were released three days ago to run emacs at useable speeds.

Re:What's wrong with "subnotebook" ?

[cpghost]

Technically, nothing's wrong with "subnotebook". But psychologically and in terms of marketing, it's akin to "substandard", something "inferior" and of "less value". Yeah, silly for sure, but customers are a funny bunch.

Re:What's wrong with "subnotebook" ?

[solios]

Agreed, and it certainly explains a lot.

Kind of like the difference between "only 19.95!" and "only 20!"

probably invalid

[speedtux]

I suspect that by now, the term "netbook" has become generic and they have no claim. They still have rights to "Psion Netbook".

Lot of wiggle room

[Quila]

Their netbooks were basically overglorified organizers. These netbooks are fully-functional PCs in small packages, an arguably different market segment.

Re:Lot of wiggle room

[Just Some Guy]

Their netbooks were basically overglorified organizers.

Their trademark is filed under "Goods and Services: laptop computers". That doesn't leave much room.

Re:Lot of wiggle room

[Culture20]

Their trademark is filed under "Goods and Services: laptop computers". That doesn't leave much room.

Not "Goods and Services: netbook computers"? Then it's not the same area...

Re:Lot of wiggle room

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true.

I owned a Psion Series 5mx. While it was not the same product as the Psion Netbook, it used practically the same interface and had the same capabilities. (Just a smaller form factor.)

Let me tell you, I'd consider the 5mx to be a quite capable personal computer to this day. Sure, its 4-grayscale display is a bit baroque, but it used compactflash storage, had IR and RS232 connectivity, and was able to run a passable office suite, e-mail, and a web browser and even some games. The 5mx had probably the best keyboard for its size i've ever used too, and while I never used a Netbook, I bet it had a nicer keyboard.

No, it didn't run Windows, but that's not a required criterion for a netbook. Hell, the quintessential netbook, the Asus eeePC (I'm typing this on a 900), runs Xandros with a stripped-down UI, with about the same functionality as the Psion Series 5mx, except it has nowhere as good PIM functionality.

I consider the main difference between a PDA and a netbook to be mainly the ease in which you can enter text, and screen size. The Psion Series 5mx straddled the limit, you could either call it a large PDA or a really tiny netbook. The Psion Netbook, however, was a true netbook. Capabilities are a bit lame compared to current netbooks, true. But it's been quite a few years.

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[jonbryce]

But I didn't for one minute think Psion was making these things. I was quite aware that Asus, Elonex, HP, Toshiba, Acer etc were making them.

Netbook -- where is the net?

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Laptop - fits in your lap. Good term. That's where mine is often.

Netbook - ummm? So it has a network, so does everything. I never did like this term anyway. How about Palmtop? Oh, yea -- Palm(tm) so how about Petitetop? Yes, I do like that :)

Re:Netbook -- where is the net?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means its mostly to run internets apps. Web & e-mail. Sort of a thin client.

It's all about precedent.

[solios]

As a corollary, this is exactly why the RIAA is suing the hell out of 75 year old blind armless grandmothers and not, say... Harvard.

Combine some Little Guy crushing with a tech-unsavvy judge in the jurisdiction of your choosing and WHAMMO!. Profit.

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[MichaelSmith]

Honestly, does anyone know? This is just stupid and it completely inhibits progress.

Why? Nobody is going to take my eeepc from my cold dead hands.

Secure from battle stations

[mbeckman]

Calm down all you flamers. Psion is doing nothing wrong. This is perfectly moral and legal behavior on their part. They invented the term Netbook and are entitled to keep it as a trademark as long as they want. They still use the term in commerce and thus they still hold legal ownership under U.S. and international trademark law. No different from Apple's continued ownership of PowerBook. It's Psion's property and if you're griping about it you're simply being hypocritical, unless you are willing to give up your own intellectual property without a fight. The right thing for all of us to do is to simply switch to another term. Netbook is inaccurate in any case. The salient feature of these devices is not their network connectivity -- every notebook has that. It's their miniature size. These devices are all about the dimensions of the defunct palmtop form factor (sold by IBM, Sony, Acer, etc). Those did _not_ have much in the way of network ability, so a natural and more accurate name for these new devices is netpalmtop.

Re:Secure from battle stations

[tzot]

I am sorry I don't have any more mod points; I would award you an "Insightful", even if all you offer is not insight, but common logic.

Re:Secure from battle stations

[Anonymous Coward]

Pocketbook?

Re:Secure from battle stations

[shutdown -p now]

The right thing for all of us to do is to simply switch to another term.

True, especially as there is an long-existing (since 90s) term describing that class of laptops: "subnotebook".

Re:Secure from battle stations

[Anonymous Coward]

If we were trying to sell a competing product, then I understand the trademark argument. What is the legal standing from preventing a blogger from using the term?

Re:Secure from battle stations

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a MUCH better term would be craptop :-)

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your definition of progress is intriguing. I'd rather they trademarked all those dumb buzzwords now. WTF is a "netbook" anyway? If that word made any sense it would be something like that ugly Amazon ebook reader, a book connected to the internet. Not a small portable general purpose computer.

Isn't the "netbook's" time almost over anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

A special term for a small, low-powered computer... That's going to be useful for about another 5 minutes. It's not like a PDA/palmtop where the form factor is radically different and a new term is useful. It's just a smaller, more modest laptop!

Maybe I have all this bottled up rage over the stupid name because a netbook killed my dad.

Re:Isn't the "netbook's" time almost over anyway?

[Just Some Guy]

It's just a smaller, more modest laptop!

Not even close. My Eee is about the size of a trade paperback and darn nigh indestructible. While it's no substitute for a laptop, neither is a laptop a substitute for it.

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[Just Some Guy]

But I didn't for one minute think Psion was making these things. I was quite aware that Asus, Elonex, HP, Toshiba, Acer etc were making them.

They were, and apparently sold a lot of them. They might want to again some day and it looks like they've done the legal homework to call them "netBook (r)" to the exclusion of everyone else.

Capitalization Matters?

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but it seems the unique capitalization they used in their trademark could work against them. In much the same way as windows is not the same as Windows(TM), netbook and netBook(TM) are just as dissimilar, if not more so.

"Court" tag?

[Matt Perry]

Why is this tagged "court"? No court is involved here. Wouldn't it be more accurate to tag it law or legal?

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[Matt Perry]

But I didn't for one minute think Psion was making these things. I was quite aware that Asus, Elonex, HP, Toshiba, Acer etc were making them.

Yep, Psion made one and called it the NetBook. Here's a review of one of them from March 2000.

Really, all it takes is google

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, prior art is all it takes. The term "Netbook" pre-dates Psion by a minimum of 1 year.

http://www.villagevoice.com/1998-06-16/news/burning-bridges/

Here you go lil guys, just throw prior art in their face and tell them to eat your trademarked fecal matter design.

Cheers.

No -- *PSION* coined the term

[Big Jojo]

When do they start suing the Intel Corporation or Acer (one of whom had coined the term IIRC)...

Ding! That's the sound of your head ringing after being struck by a cluebat.

The whole point is that Psion coined, and trademarked, the term several years ago. Neither Intel nor Acer coined the term, despite what the bogus article summary says.

In fact I even own one of the Psion netbooks. It's actually not particularly old; maybe four years. I have older machines that are still in active use. If the Linux support for this one were in mainline, I'd use it more.

Good Luck with That

[leeosenton]

Another loser company with no viable products that wants to sue their way to fortune. Perhaps Psion could seek advice from Daryl McBride.... oops, looks like they may have already. I'm typing this on my new, shiny, NETBOOK and it isn't labeled Psion. Thanks to the efforts of lame companies like this; netbook prices from actual netbook manufacturers will be higher so they can pay the attorney fees to defend themselves from stoopid lawsuits. Thanks, Psion. Makes me all anxious to buy from you. Oh wait, nevermind, you don't actually make a netbook.

Re:Good Luck with That

[glebd]

And to think Psion was synonymous with innovation and clever design once. Shame, really. Symbian and Nokia drove innovation into the ground. Sad.

Re:Good Luck with That

[hattig]

It's a fricking cease and decease letter, for a trademarked term that Psion came up with at least 8 years ago. Not only do they have the right to do this, they practically HAVE to do this to protect their trademarked term. And they'll win, they have the active trademark. The term has only been misused for a short time.

I'm typing this on my mininote. Looks like HP's lawyers did some trivial checks...

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the reason people are taking issue with Psion's actions is that a) they have taken too long to start complaining about the use of the term, b) regardless of what they used to make, they don't actively manufacture a product using that name, and c) they started with the little guys, rather than the large corporate entities who are actually using the term for commercial purposes.

Now if Psion could produce a C&D they've previously sent to Intel (for starters), that would be a different matter. If Psion had enforced their trademark from the very beginning and hence the term 'netbook' had never come into the popular vernacular for this particular type of small notebook, the trademark would be secured but near-worthless. This entire exercise sniffs of an impending attempt to sell the trademark to Intel or one of the other deep-pocketed commercial users of the term for large sums of cash.

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[Kindaian]

The issue is that when I'm referring to a netbook, everyone currently knows that I'm referring to the smallish portable computers... Not the Psion stuff. [it may be a bit too late now i believe, but IANAL, nor a IP expert] When Intel refered the term in their marketspeech... they should have got the C&D... The public or even the site owner has nothing to do with the use of the term. They are not selling computers with it... To exist a trademark violation, it needs to exist trade in the first place, and trade in the specific class that the trademark was registered. I for once can trademark the term "netbook" to the class of educational/books. And if Psion didn't registered it for that class... tough luck... ;) (that is why you have an musical editor called "Apple" and a computer company called "Apple", even if they had some sort of agreements in the past, they had different markets at the time)

Re:Jerks. Are they PSYCHOS, or PSYCHORPS?

[davidsyes]

Maybe they saw into the future? And they decided to call "PSYCH! Cease or pay up..."

Told ya!

[mmu_man]

I told here many times this was a PSION trademark... the netBook was actually a nice device, appart from the unfinished JVM.

Re:It's really Psion's trademark Maybe they were

[davidsyes]

poised to PoSION any poisonous hitchers...

the ship has sailed

[alizard]

Results 1 - 10 of about 27,000,000 for netbook.

Dell Netbook Only $349 www.dell.com/mini Save with Dell's Powerful Mini PC Affordable, Powerful, and Mobile!

IdeaPad S10 Netbook $349 www.Lenovo.com/IdeaPad Easy to Carry. Easy to Connect. Enviably Cool. All-New IdeaPad S10

HP Mini Atom Netbook

Like fiberglass and xerox, the word is in common usage and I expect the trademark to be invalidated the first time Psion runs into a company or individual ready to fight.

A trademark has to be defended when it is first "misused", not years after the fact after it has been found to be worth megabucks. That trademark was registered in 1996, and that is when they should have started defending it. And that's what I expect a court to tell Psion.

Re:the ship has sailed

[hattig]

Years? YEARS?

Firstly, Psion had to become aware of the misuse.

Secondly they could have gone through several rounds of letter writing already regarding the use of the term.

Thirdly, the most recent use of 'netbook' isn't that old - commonly within the past 6 months, a few uses up to a year or two. In legal terms this is no time at all.

Dear Psion:

[Chris Tucker]

Netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook!

FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF!

Netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook, netbook!

FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF!

You may address your C&D letter to my lawyers, the Firm of Mako, Basking and White, Boston, MA.

Merry Christmas Psion

[GlobalColding]

Hope all your lawyers and executives drown in vats of warm whale spunk.
PS Netbook!

Re:the ship has returned to the building

[mbeckman]

You repeat an oft-believed myth: that Xerox lost its trademark through "genericide." Xerox successfully defended its trademark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark). If you infringe the Xerox mark today, you can and will be prosecuted. Xerox is more persistent than Scient010gy in that regard.

Another common misconception is that the "first misuse" of a trademark must be prosecuted, or that even most infringements must be prosecuted. A TM owner only has to show that they made an effort to defend their trademark in a reasonable number of cases, in a reasonable timeframe. The term "Netbook" is new -- try to find a reference before 2007. Psion is easily within the PTO's sense of a reasonable timeframe.

Anyone fighting this battle will lose. Just look at the Cisco lawsuit against Apple over iPhone: Apple had to settle despite the fact that Cisco only obtained the trademark through the acquisition of Infogear Technology. Cisco won the iPhone VPN franchise -- not likely a coincidence, and a heck of a spoil in anyone's book. And Cisco can _still_ use the iPhone trademark for its own products.

Sailed schailed. This ship is in dry dock.

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[roguetrick]

Awesome, so what do we do when a trademark becomes generic and people ask for a product but get another product instead (ask for a coke, get a pepsi). Do we get to sue every resturant who does this for trade fraud? Or just the resturants we don't like?

So Sorry...

[Talkischeap]

So sorry, I'm a bit late to the Party.

Have the Piss-on jokes started yet?

to quote gizmodo

[niteice]

Dearest Psion,

Netbook. Netbook netbook netbook. Netbook netbook netbook, netbook netbook!

Netbook,
Netbook.

- Netbook

Subcompact

[tepples]

Average Joe (plumber or not) would respond with a blank stare if asked about a "subnotebook".

What, is that the part underneath the regular notebook?

What about a subcompact? Is that the part underneath the regular compact car?

Re:Subcompact

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard that term for a car before ... but I'm not American... Does that apply to cars smaller than a battletank?

Re:Subcompact

[NeoSkandranon]

Most people in the states tend to think of the Yaris, Geo or what have you as a "tiny fucking car" not a subcompact.

USB memory cards

[tepples]

Up next: what do you call tiny, flash-based USB drives?

My cousin used to use "memory stick" until he bought a PSP system and found out what Memory Stick really was. Now he says "USB memory card", which fits with "PS2 memory card", "GameCube memory card", "SD card", etc.

Pot, kettle - a bunch of theves complaining?

[cheros]

Psion in its days was known for "adopting" inventions and improvements to its products from other people without as much as a thank you if they could get away with it. That is IMHO a much graver misdemeanour than defending the indefensible and appears to be a return to old form. It doesn't inspire trust in a company - choosing this route is pathetic and makes me wonder just how much in trouble they are financially.

In this case, just inform Psion in writing that

a - you don't use the term commercially for your products and their complaint thus doesn't apply
b - you use it as described by Intel, not by Psion and you will naturally reconsider matters when Intel has been successfully barred using the term. I don't think they are quite ready to take on Intel, that's why they start with the "little people" first and see if this flies.

AFAIK they aren't able to censor the world from using words, only when commercially in relation to a product (if not I would like to hear arguments why).

AINAL (etc), and the usual disclaimers apply.

Nope - wrong

[cheros]

I forgot something - a trademarked name *must* be protected and AFAIK the timeframe is still acceptable for Psion to try and enforce it - otherwise it goes the way of cellotape.. This is not a matter of taking what isn't theirs - it IS theirs, properly.

This is also illustrated in the letter where they accept it way take some time to transition away from the name (try subnotebook) - but it still leaves the Intel question out there. AFAIK Intel may have a problem on its hands, or has already licensed the name. One way or the other, that's where the entertainment will be.

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[jbengt]

Intersting that in that review, they talk about how great the Psion "Word" application is, and how people not in the know tend to confuse it with "Microsoft Word".
Not that I think a common word such as "Word" deserves trademark protection, anyway.

I was a Psion fan

[billlion]

I had a series of Psion 3s and 4s series palmtops and at the time they were vastly superior to anything else on the market. Full qwerty keyboard, more than adequate word processing and spreadsheet programs, and a nice little built in language, and a multi threaded, multi tasking Os with a decent scheduler. I just wished they had carried on being commercially successful and had driven out the badly designed OSs we had to put up with on small machines. My Psions never crashed. It was Microsoft remember that introduced the computer using public to the idea that it was acceptable for the OS to crash rather than application programs. So if Psion can make any money by suing netbook imitators for trademark infringement and use the money to get going again then Go Psion!

Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal?

[CAIMLAS]

Trademarks are very, very important. They are what allow us to distinguish, successfully, between products and companies; aside from the products themselves, they are all that a company has to rely upon to keep themselves solvent.

Unless you like buying things the way they do in Asia - be presented with two seemingly identical products, of similar quality (say, the equivilant of Jim Bob's Computer x01 and Bob Hope's Computer x01), but one is an inferior clone of the other or maybe something entirely different - basically, every store is essentially a yard sale - then you likely enjoy the fruits of trademarks as well.

Head on over to tinydeal.com if you actually -like- buying things which don't associate with trademarks. They've got a LOT of shoddy products with no company willing to put their logo on it.

At last.. acknowledgement

[Anonymous Coward]

Psion made and sold the first and only netbooks. All others are copies intended to capitalise on Psion's work. Plus Psion was first.

How's that iphone issue going.. you know the one where apple started using that name to market its own products even though some other company has the ownership rights with their product that was conceived and brought to market first?

Actually contacted Psion

[aafuss]

Actually contacted Psion about this issue-here's what I sent: I'm quite concerned over your firm's recent cease and desist notices to several websites about netbooks because although there is a trademark registrations for that name, it's commonly used to refer to small laptops that run Linux or Windows. I suggest that you reconsider and respect this growing segment by not letting your legal firm sending out such notices to sites that are about small laptops that run Linux or Windows caled "netbooks"-it's harming these site owners and the industry for these. If you continue to assert your rights to the term, other sites and makers of these low-cost laptops will have no choice but to stop using "netbook" and find a alternative term to describe these. So-I would expect Psion-Teklogix to reply saying they don't want people referring to small and low-cost laptops as netbooks. If the site used netbook explicity-then Psion would have the right to send c&d's, if it was netbooks (do they have a trademark on the plural word netbooks?)-then not.

Should I check my spam box?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting... have not seen such a C&D e-mail yet. Should I check my spam box? - NetbookService.com & NetbookSupport.com

Re:Should I check my spam box?

[cizoozic]

Interesting... have not seen such a C&D e-mail yet. Should I check my spam box? - NetbookService.com & NetbookSupport.com

Definitely, as soon as you find a hotspot.