Psion Accuses Intel of Cybersquatting

Save the Netbooks writes "We discussed Psion sending C&Ds late last year over international trademarks held on the term 'netbook' and Dell accusing Psion of fraud last week. Since then Intel has joined in by suing Psion in federal court. On Friday Psion counter-sued Intel (court filing, PDF). SaveTheNetbooks.com has an analysis here. Psion has demanded a jury trial, profits, treble damages, destruction of material bearing the mark 'netbook' and the netbook.com domain (among other things), claiming that they are still actively selling netbooks despite also revealing sales figures showing a minuscule market share. It seems that declaring victory may have been a little premature as it will be months before the dispute plays out in court."

Comments

Britney Spears School of Publicity

[stewbacca]

Hey, if you can't make it with the quality of your product, just make sure you are in the news a lot.

Re:Britney Spears School of Publicity

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Psion actually did have high-quality handhelds back before they became so commonplace. Unlike a lot of their competitors, they actually included a compiler right on their devices so you could program or modify existing programs. Of course, this is back in the '90s, before even the Newton...

Re:Britney Spears School of Publicity

[hey!]

I actually think Psion might have a case here. They registered the "netBook" trademark years ago, and have been selling "netBook" branded subnotebooks continually over the last decade.

At this point, I think "Netbook" has become generic, but not through a failure of Psion to protect its trademark. Intel, while not selling a device of its own, improperly appropriated Psion's trademark for its own commercial ends (selling Atom processors to subnotebook manufacturers among others). If Sun decided that "J2EE Server" wasn't going to win any adopters, and decided to call them "Websphere servers", that would be clearly be improper, even though they weren't using to refer specifically to their implementation.

Re:Britney Spears School of Publicity

[kimvette]

They may have registered "netBook" years ago but the only "netBook" product they list is in their discontinued product page. One of the requirements for maintaining a trademark is to actively use it.

Their focus seems to be vehicle-mounted computers, appropriate for police and delivery vehicles, and their handheld units are appropriate for managing stores (inventory control) and delivery personnel, not the target market for netbooks.

They abandoned it, and let it fall into common use, becoming a genericized trademark. I would buy a "netbook" like an Aspire One or eee PC, but I would not buy a "NETBOOK PRO" from Psion even if it were to be brought back into production.

Re:Britney Spears School of Publicity

[el_$corpio]

I also have a Psion Netbook and have been using mine every day for years. What it lacks in connectivity it makes up for in speed, battery life and applications that do what they should and carry no bloat. The Agenda is still the best calendar app I've used. For example, you can create an entry and then add a (Psion) Word document containing information about the entry, including images, etc.

It turns on instantly. That alone puts it above any of the subnotebooks that are currently calling themselves netbooks. You can pop the CF cards in and out without causing the OS any confusion. You can even get a Windows like front end.

Wireless network cards can be got from eBay without too much difficulty (I've got a couple). You normally get an RS232 cable with the Netbook but it's easier to copy all of the files on the C: drive to a CF card and then copy the CF card to a PC.

Oh, and infrared works fine here - can use it to connect to the internet through my mobile phone and send and receive files.

And the Psion 5 (or 5MX) is completely compatible with these, so you can carry all of this around in your pocket if you don't want to lug around the Netbook.

Stunning machine at the time, still brilliant now (if you accept it's limitations) and a name well worth defending IMHO.

Re:Britney Spears School of Publicity

[Jane Q. Public]

If Psion had trademarked the name, and they were still using it (apparently they WERE still selling netbooks, even if only a few), then they probably have rights to the name. It doesn't matter than Intel is a much larger company. If Psion had a trademark on the name, and Intel did not check to see if the name was already trademarked, then they DID steal the name.

Whether Psion's product "caught on" in the market is irrelevant, as long as they were still selling them. You can't exactly let Intel void their trademark just because Intel is a bigger company! That's why we have trademarks in the first place.

Re:Britney Spears School of Publicity

[Klintus Fang]

This is true. Intel and the other companies currently using the term netbook to define this class of devices could have said "Ooops sorry" and that would have been the end of it.

If Psion had made their move to protect the trademark back when the Intel first started encouraging the use of this term in the media then that surely is what would have happened. But psion, in their own statements, said they waited until the latter quarters of 2008 after it was clear to them that the use of the term netbook for this general class of devices was spreading across the industry.

That I think is a key distinction. They waited. I'm not a lawyer of course, but it seems relevant to me.

Of course if Psion had sent out the CDC orders sooner, before the term caught on in the media and in the marketting departments of Intel, Dell, and others, then they would have nothing to gain. Psion had already discontinued their netbook line and would have gained nothing if they stopped the industry from using the term before it caught on.

Now look at the position Psion is in. If they succeed, they will now have exclusive rights to a trademark which has value because of the dollars spend by the big players in the industry to push the term as the definition of a general class of device.

It's unfortunate that these companies ended up using a term that was also a trademark for a discontinued psion product line. But it seems highly disengenuous that psion waited until after multiple companies had spent large amounts of marketing cash pushing the term to send their CDC orders. Seems like they waited for these other companies to breath life into the dead trademark before choosing to exercise their claim to that trademark.

The term 'netbook'...

[Nursie]

I thought it originated (in its current incarnation, not the Psion one) in the tech press and tech community, not as a marketing term from Intel or Dell.

Also, are Asus not involved and if not, why not? They kicked this thing off.

Re:Just call it something else.

[PIBM]

They are not there to sue
From Psion themselves:

Is Psion looking for financial compensation?

Although taking someoneâ(TM)s trademark is a serious matter, we have simply asked retailers and
manufacturers to transition to a different descriptive term over a 3 month term. We have not
sought compensation at all from any party contacted. We have no intention of selling the
âNetbookâ(TM) trademark registrations either, valuable as they may be, or of licensing them on a
for-profit basis. We simply wish to continue use of our âNetbookâ(TM) trademark, and to be free to
use it on our future products.

If the sales figures are true ...

[hattig]

"Assuming around 15,000,000 netbooks were sold in 2008 at a conservative $200 per unit (and that our calculations are correct) Psion had a "netbook" market share of two thousandths of one percent in 2008 - rather low for a company claiming to hold a monopoly over the mark."

and absolutely irrelevant, especially as the sales in 2005 and 2006 show massive amounts of sales, and as they were the sole player in that market then, a 100% share. Within the past 5 years. And Intel's abuse of the trademark led to the Psion share of the netbook marking shrinking.

Psion have this one all wrapped up.

Anybody else think it's funny..

[topham]

Since Netbook has NO MEANING anyway?

Psion will lose because they aren't an American company. Not because they don't have a case.

Small == wrong?

[DaveV1.0]

claiming that they are still actively selling netbooks despite also revealing sales figures showing a minuscule market share.

So, what the submitter is saying is that because Psion has a small player with "minuscule market share", the big guys should be able to ignore Psion's trademarks.

More hypocrisy from the /. crowd.

Re:Just call it something else.

[hattig]

Psion came up with the term.
Psion got the trademark.
Psion made good sales up until 2007 - note this is well within the five year trademark term before it's not in use.
Psion indeed still sell remaining stock.
Intel started using the term 'netbook' in 2008 to describe the systems they were pushing that were in the exact same format as the Psion Netbook and Netbook Pro.
Psion only wanted the websites, bloggers and companies to stop using the term 'netbook' for non Psion products.
Intel's now gone too far, and Psion have had to file suit.
For other entities, they have respected the trademarks - Google has put the term on the banned list for advertisements, for example.