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

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.