Psion explains "Netbook" legal offensive

Psion, which owns a trademark on "Netbook," says it's after manufacturers who use the word to market their products, not websites that talk about them. The mixup occurred thanks to Amazon ads, or something. [Lilliputing]

[#1 posted by gber, December 28, 2008 7:44 AM]

I am a bit dismayed that none of my favorite tech news sites could even link to a summary of trademark law, helping me understand if Psion had the right to suppress articles using the trademark term. Did we lose another word in the English language or was this another case of a company overstepping its legal claims? To be clear, none of these web sites were producing product that competed with Psion. They used the term in a report. How does trademark apply in journalism?

Assuming that the trademark is applicable to journalism, the press must now pursue their own trademarks to describe new products, or we will have another netb**k incident. The press doesn't have to assume this cost -- just demand that for every new class of product, a company or industry must release a descriptive term to Creative Commons which the press will then adopt. Until a term is released in this manner, the press will ignore the product.

Sure it won't happen, engizmo is fueled by "me first/me too" speculative articles that spew under deadlines that barely tolerate spell checking.

[#2 posted by Agies, December 28, 2008 9:00 AM]

@1 please take another look at the article. There is no pressure on publications to stop using the term netbook, only on manufacturers. While Psion might not want their trademarked term to slip into common usage there isn't a whole lot they can do about it except ask nicely.

[#3 posted by Sean Eric FAgan, December 28, 2008 9:39 AM]

The problem is that they can't allow publications to use the term, either. By allowing some people to use the term to refer to (say) the MSI Wind, they lose the ability to stop MSI Wind from using the term. (Well, they lose the ability in court. It'd still cost MSI a heckuva lot of money to get there.)

Trademarks are all-or-nothing: either you defend it, or you lose it. (And another caveat: you can have your trademark narrowed, and not lose it completely.)

[#4 posted by karengeier, December 28, 2008 11:09 AM]

Dear unauthorized users of our trademarked term:

Please cease and desist from advertising our product for free. We find this behaviour abhorrent. We prefer to spend our money on legal bills.

Thank you for your understanding.

file under: misguided ideas which seemed good at the time

[#5 posted by gber, December 28, 2008 12:56 PM]

@2 - Yes, this article suggests that Psion is now targeting advertisements. I can't tell if that was their original intent: the cease & desist letter that engadget printed (http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/24/psion-teklogix-sending-out-cease-and-desist-letters-to-netbook-cen/) certainly suggests a broader goal.

[#6 posted by andygates, December 29, 2008 2:10 AM]

Wait, Psion made a netbook? Did anyone buy it?

[#7 posted by Charlie Stross, December 29, 2008 5:37 AM]

Andy Gates: Wait, Psion made a netbook? Did anyone buy it?

Yes. Me, for one.

Back in the day -- circa 2000-2003 -- if you wanted a machine that weighed 1Kg, had a 85% full-sized keyboard, instant-on, and ran for 10 hours, Psion were the go-to people. The Psion Netbook (and it's lower-spec sibling, the Series 7) ran EPOC/32, the same OS as their earlier Series 5 and 5MX PDAs; it's still sold today as Symbian, the smartphone OS. It was way ahead of its time in many ways, and some of us still shed tears of nostalgia for them.

Alas, Psion saw Microsoft taking aim at them with Windows CE in 1999, and didn't so much blink as shit themselves in terror and vacate the market. You can find a partisan but enlightening description of their rise and fall here -- the last, best hope of the British personal computing industry.

[#8 posted by Simon Bradshaw, December 29, 2008 7:12 AM]

Trade mark law is not copyright law!

A trade mark is infringed by use of that mark in connection with selling that class of goods. Mentioning a trade mark does not infringe it and indeed most legal systems recognised comparative advertising to a greater or lesser extent, so you can use a competitor's trade mark in your own adverts, albeit often subject to laws about honest comparisons. What you can't do is use someone else's trade mark, or a mark close to it, to sell your own product.