 |
April 13 - April 20,2003 |
A Lindows by any other name...
Microsoft embarks on another lawsuit arguing "windows" a trademark
By Alessandro Cancian
Originally Published: 2003-03-23
A jury will decide whether "windows" is too generic a name to be considered a trademark of Microsoft, ruled District Judge John Coughenour who's handling the suit by the Redmond giant against Lindows, a small company marketing a Linux OS.
The legal dispute regarding the "windows" trademark seems destined to protract longer than foreseen. After Microsoft last month managed to get a ruling against Lindows' (www.lindows.com) petition for a summary judgement, thus getting a postponement to April 7, Seattle's District Court now moved the date to December 1.
San Diego-based Lindows offers an alternative to Microsoft's Windows OS by developing a version of the open-source Linux OS with a simplified user interface. The company initially pledged that its OS would run common Windows software, but it has since changed course, focusing instead on providing open-source applications that can read files created with common Windows counterparts.
Microsoft contended Lindows was purposefully trying to mislead people by using a name similar to Windows.
After denying, at least for the moment, a Lindows motion for the "windows" name to be declared too generic, and a Microsoft motion to block Lindows activities pending a verdict, the district judge allowed more time for the parties to explain their reasons.
The court deemed it necessary to allow time enough for both litigants to submit and examine new documents in addition to the already thick folders submitted in the last few weeks.
Lindows, in particular, expressed the intention to submit as evidence the documents of an old 1992 case when Apple accused Microsoft of "plagiarizing," in its Windows OS, the windows and other elements of the graphic interface of Mac OS that Apple considered its own intellectual property. Bill Gates' company successfully argued that other companies had already used those elements before Apple, including Xerox.
That 11-year-old victory could come back to haunt Microsoft. Lindows will attempt to use the same arguments proposed by Microsoft at the time to defend the idea that "windows" is a generic name in widespread use, which therefore cannot be claimed as a trademark.
Page 1/...Page 2
|
| Home / Back to Top |
|
|
 |
|
|
</ td>
