| Glass Panes and Software: Windows Name Is Challenged [NYTimes] |
Dec. 30, 2002
A ruling on the validity of Microsoft's Windows trademark is expected in January. The case began last December when Microsoft filed a trademark infringement suit and asked the Court to block Lindows.com from using its company name, Lindows.com, Inc. and its product name. Steve Lohr examines both sides of the issue in the New York Times . . .
" . . . Lindows.com is defending a broad principle, its lawyer says. "No company, no matter how powerful, no matter how much money it has spent, should be able to gain a commercial monopoly on words in the English language," said the lawyer, Daniel Harris, a partner at Clifford Chance . . . "
" The legal fault line in this case lies between descriptive and generic. Microsoft's argument, in essence, is that Windows is a term for the window feature of the company's product that, by dint of Microsoft's huge investment, has acquired a powerful "secondary meaning." In a court filing last month, Microsoft submitted as evidence a consumer survey that found that 83 percent of people who used PC's at work and 73 percent of PC users at home regarded Windows as a Microsoft trademark and not a generic name . . . "
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[Note: A complete set of Lindows.com's filings can be found here.]
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