"David A. Bandel" wrote: > > On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 15:42:00 -0500 > begin Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spewed forth: > > > Seems that late Friday, the court ruled against M$'s request for a > > preliminary injunction against Lindows using the name Lindows. Details > > at www.lindows.com/opposition. Bout time some Linux company showed a > > little backbone where M$ is concerned. > > What the court said was that it wanted to look more closely at the > trademark "Windows" because you can't trademark common dictionary terms > and get protection under the law. > > Looks to me like the term Windows long supercedes M$' hijacking of the > term. I found windows in the dictionary and it made no mention of a > computer operating system by M$ or anyone else. Guess if it did, they'd > really have to put W then X Window. > > Ciao, > > David A. Bandel
According to the judge's ruling at the above site, Lindows had proved that the term Windows was in common usage in the computer field before M$ sucked it up in 1983 and since then there are literally hundreds of web sites and computer products that incorporate the name windows and that the term was generic and therefore not protected by copy write (the next part was particularly delightful) no matter how much money and effort a company put into merchandising the name. Looks like Linus Torvalds has a kindred soul on the bench. The real kicker was the judge's finding that there were some serious issues raised, by M$ itself, to their use of the name. I can just see it now the next release of Gates will be Microsoft ? 2004. Lee______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list - http://linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users > Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL. _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.
