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Trademark suit against Lindows thrown out
A judge has thrown out Microsoft's law suit against Lindows. The suit challanged the use of too similar a name to Windows.
[blockquote]Lindow's president and major stockholder, Micheal Robertson, thought there were very good legal grounds to use a defense that the word had been used so often before Microsoft tried to enforce its exclusive use, and had been used in so many generic ways, that the word could neither be copyrighted nor trademarked.[/blockquote]
[link=http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14115]The full report[/link] - Submitted by Ageek (Source next time please, thanks)
[blockquote]Lindow's president and major stockholder, Micheal Robertson, thought there were very good legal grounds to use a defense that the word had been used so often before Microsoft tried to enforce its exclusive use, and had been used in so many generic ways, that the word could neither be copyrighted nor trademarked.[/blockquote]
[link=http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14115]The full report[/link] - Submitted by Ageek (Source next time please, thanks)
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first, Lindows day before yesterday sent me two emails confirming that the suit had been thrown out at pre-trial and that Microsoft had been given 9 days to appeal the decision (that info, I got after the submit). At that time, eWeek, and ExtremeTech and PCMag and PCWorld had not published yet on their websites. Yesterday I got email (some in headline summary and some in newsletter form) from PC-Mag, PC-World, Baseline, eWeek, TechRepublic, and they all had this theme in common: Has Microsoft effectively lost their Trademark because it is unenforceable??? Today, after folks had had time to think and talk to their lawyers, and their lawyers read the decision, they think the judges decision is well grounded in legal precedent.
In essence it was breaking news when submitted, I got confirmation from two sources, the rest followed after submission. It is now headline material on the New York Times website, Baseline, eWeek, TechRepublic, Extremetech, and quite few other places.
So to get info by link, use the names I gave, and use [PHP]www.name.com[/PHP] In the case of the New York Times, try http://www.newyorktimes.com/ .
Here is one link that summarizes the story, and it has a link to a PDF that says more about the details:
http://eletters.eweek.com/zd1/cts?d=79-475-2-3-185173-56097-1
It was not up yet when I submitted the news article, which was a synopis of what I knew then and what I know now of copyright and trademark law from a working attorney who passed away 3+ years ago-- my father. He showed me and made me read and discuss, the base and the actual letter of the copyright act, and I was interested in copyright from age 8 on. To have a trademark, you basicly have to have something unique to you that you use as a brand name unique to you actively. When you can prove that with designs of packaging then you can get it registered as a trademark, adn to maintain you must use it. But, it must be uniqu to you to claim rights to it. Xerox, when they first researched GUI, and they were one company that laid the GUI groundwork embodied in what we know to expect to see as a "desktop" feature set now, used the Windows simile. Folks at MIT and many other places helped. They used windows and pane and focus and frame and boundary and container ideas now commonly accepted as "normal" way before Microsoft had any intention of developing what it now claims is something it has the right to use exclusively. Gates was negotiating for a property that became the bascis of MS-DOS when this started.
The first mouse had one button. The second, two. Before Windows 2 was out (in fact, Windows 3.0 was the first accepted as better than what Xerox had already).
There is not one source for this(the sources number in the thousands), I lived through it. Were I to wish to, I could copyright this as original author of this set of words and concept flows. But I want this site to grow. So, it is site property in my eyes.
Note, in the submission I said "If this (decision) holds." That was important. In this respect, Lindows is acting as front man for Open Source in standing up to a company that wants a monopoly. The decision logic is grounded and rooted in what folks can have unique rigths to, the first person to create a work can copyright it-- that is what an implicit copyright right is all about. To register, you prove you have the ideas as you expressed them first, you do a copyright search. Each word is not copyrightable, the whole thing and logic flow is. To later prove you have a copyright, you can provide original work that is coherently presented and is unique, and ask for a copyright enforcement. Or, you can give a copy of it to a respected body to hold in trust-- the Library of Congress in the US does this for major things, and keeps them for decades, some for centuries. They get most of their collection free, because they track when it was submitted. Much of it has been digitized now.
John D.
Your broad generalizations make me question your credibility. This isn't a company that "wants a monopoly", I think it's a company that ones to "protect their intellectual property" pretty common among companies..
Perhaps I should go invent the CammanCorp Sentium Processor, think I'm gonna get a letter from someone about this? They are trying to profit of the success of the Windows name, they want people to see their OS as a "cheaper Windows", that's all their is to it and it's a disgraceful business practice
That is opinion. But, basicly, Microsoft, as with anyone with intellectual property, wants their product in universal use. Misapply law, you get into monopoly. American Oil owned a lot of Oil rights, but they got broken up. AMPI got so they set prices higher than many people would pay, folks complained, and the Department of Justice intervened-- basicly, they proceeded to get suppliers to accept certain prices, and those suippliers were most of them in a large area of the US. Then for that reagion they fixed the prices. My dad worked that case, took three-four years of investigation-- and that became an anti-trust suit.
Xerox, working with very good universities, invented a GUI with windows, panes, and it was a visible feedback GUI. They helped fund the development of the mouse. There are many ways to get GUIs, adn the fact is Linux is an alternative if you want to spend the time to learn that alternative, and it has a choice of 15 GUI packs for it. It uses Xfree as underlying support, and there are many ways to use Xfree. Microsoft does not in fact have a GUI that is all theres as idea of GUI-- it has code that in fact is a set of ways to have a GUI, and those are two different things.
Did Netscape write code that was using Microsft's copyrights??? No, they came up with an alternate browser. Microsoft nearly bankrupted Netscape as a corporation with legal costs. Netscape eventually devolved to the point that Mozilla still exists, which was the core of Netscape, but as open source code.
Monopoly wanting is as is seen by a corporation's behavior set over time.
The district judge said they did not have a case versus Lindows, and Lin is the first syllable of Linux, upon which Lindows is based. You can get software for it from a library on the web, via FTP, from your computer. I can do with KDE all the functions that Windows does, run an MX700 Logitech or Intellimouse on it, run open office with the same exact keystrokes on Windows or Linux, or on Solaris do almost the same with same app.
The base concept of a window with work areas that are panes, and dragging and arranging to suit is not something Microsoft has to itself. By any means. In KDe, I start with 4 desktops, can switch with keyboard or mouse click.
I do use XP, but that is for use of third party apps that Microsoft does not own the rights to.
Using a computer is about functionality, and Linux is basicly as functional as windows, plus these days I can kill an app that hangs in or below GUI level and I can see more underlying details than I can with Windows-- and see them more easily, once I learned the differences in management tools. Linux also does not use Active-X, and cannot run 103,000 malignant programs that are unique to windows due to Active-X. I can surf to 90% of websites in 5 major browsers in Linux. Microsoft has one such.
Defend your intellectual rights, by all means, but do not overprice them, or someone will come up another mouse trap that works as well but without the price up front. Its been done, is happening now.
But Microsoft does not own the word window or Windows even. windows is just more than one window, adn has been in common use so long that it is not cpoyrightable or Trademarkable because it is not unique. In this case, not only did someone use the word first, many folks did. The code set is Microsoft's property, not the word. That is what the Open source legal defense fund was set up to do, allow for cases with pooled impact costs. IBM, Sun, Novell, Intel, all have contributed, along with smaller companies. When enough folks get mad, they gang up on the bully, and this decision is one of many that are gathering into a picture of folks fighting someone who tries to make the rules in a market and kill off those who are smaller. It is not the big distribution network that is illegal, it is using the funds to keep others from competing that is.Microsoft has had a pattern of doing so, and tries to find new ways to do so often.
I am talking about rights, in general, as the ideas have been enforced again and again in specific cases-- enough to become legal principles.
John D.