Re: How do YOU refer to the Palm Device?

[Nathan J. Williams]

"Dave Lippincott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> There is also a legal precedence that if you choose not to enforce your
> trademarks, you may find yourself limited as to what you can do if you do
> decide to later go after the offenders.

        At a conference I recently attended (the Usenix embedded
systems workshop), the people talking about smart office spaces and
personal agents and whatnot used the term "pilot" or "palmpilot" as
the generic term - not just for the Palm/3Com product, but for PDAs in
general. So while I respect the company's desire to keep control of
their trademarks, it seems like they've reached the level of Kleenex,
Coke, or Xerox in the PDA world. This is probably a good sign for the
product line as a whole, but I expect legions of trademark lawyers to
spend much effort to keep the name just this side of the public
domain. 

        - Nathan