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Netbooks Popular Enough For a C&D From Psion
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Dec 24, 2008 02:48 PM
from the real-mark-of-success dept.
from the real-mark-of-success dept.
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."
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Submission: Netbooks popular enough for C&D from Psion by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Hardware: Psion Accuses Intel of Cybersquatting 116 comments
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."
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Jerks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jerks. (Score:5, Informative)
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
Parent
Re:Jerks. (Score:4, Insightful)
But they didn't protect it until now.
Parent
Re:Jerks. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe there wasn't a need until now.
Parent
Re:Jerks. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not how it works.
Parent
Re:Jerks. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Read that again. This time with emphasis on the words jerk and knee.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Jerks. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:3, Informative)
"Organizer" (Score:2)
Next thing you know, they'll sic their lawyers on folks selling "organizers".
It's really Psion's trademark (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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" [psionteklogix.com] 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
Re:It's really Psion's trademark (Score:4, Informative)
They did. In europe, both Fujitsu Siemens and MSI registered netbook trademarks of their own: amilo netbook [europa.eu] and wind netbook [europa.eu]. I'm sure they would have registered netbook if it wasn't already taken [europa.eu]
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 [europa.eu].
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"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: (Score:2)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
Plamtops or Subnotebooks.
Would they be running PlamOS?
Re:It's really Psion's trademark (Score:5, Funny)
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.)
Parent
Re:Lot of wiggle room (Score:4, Informative)
Their netbooks were basically overglorified organizers.
Their trademark is filed under "Goods and Services: laptop computers". That doesn't leave much room.
Parent
Its a cheddar thing (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:2, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
I propose a new term: (Score:2, Funny)
Hormel and Adobe (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't going to pull this name from the clutches of the tech culture...Just like Spam and Photoshopping.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hormel and Adobe (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
Indeed, I'm still using my Series 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5 [wikipedia.org] daily.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org] was a
So... just curious: (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
They aren't suing.. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... just curious: (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow... my TRS 80 Model 100 runs for a week on 4 AA batteries.
If we can't use "Netbook", how about "Laptot"? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Secure from battle stations (Score:5, Insightful)
the ship has sailed (Score:3, Interesting)
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 defende
Re:Why on earth does is this stuff still legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yep, Psion made one and called it the NetBook. Here's a review of one of them from March 2000 [geek.com].
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Informative)
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
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
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.