Intel Lawyers Again Go Too Far In Trademark Bullying

from the back-it-down dept

Chip giant Intel has a bit of a reputation for being a trademark bully at times, threatening or suing many companies just for having "intel" in their name somewhere -- including a travel agency and a jeans company. Now, before anyone brings it up, yes, as a trademark holder the law requires you to enforce your trademark against infringement, lest it become considered "generic" (such as xerox machines, kleenex tissues, aspirin and other brand names that became generic). But, the key in all of those generic situations was that the use was applied to things that directly competed with the original brand's products. People referred to other tissues as "kleenex" and it stuck. Intel's lawyers seem to go out of their way to find potential infringement where there obviously is none at all.

Paul Alan Levy alerts us to the latest such case, where Intel has sued the operators of the Mexico Watch newsletter, because its domain is LatinIntel.com. Of course, the reason for that is that it is using the commonly accepted abbreviation of "intel" as short for "intelligence." It's common shorthand, especially within government circles, to refer to gathered intelligence as simply "intel." The owners of the site explained this to Intel, and in return were given a boilerplate explanation about trademark law, insisting that since Intel's trademark is so valuable, it still has to stop others from using it -- even if they're in a totally different business, which is an interesting interpretation of trademark law, and one not supported by the courts in most cases.

More importantly, no one is going to look at LatinIntel.com and confuse it for the world's largest computer chip maker. No one is going to look at that site and wonder how come they can't order a Centrino processor. There's simply no confusion at all. Even worse, it appears that Intel's lawyers dragged out this situation far too long. They first contacted the site back in 2007, and the site's owner responded with a clear explanation of why the name was not infringing. Since then, there have been periodic bursts of contact from different Intel lawyers (it apparently seems to change each time), followed by months of silence, before a new group of lawyers starts pestering the site again. Finally, after more than two years of this back and forth, Intel sued Mexico Watch, even though it's not even close to competitive and any "moron in a hurry" (as the popular trademark test notes) would clearly know the difference between a site about Mexican politics and a company selling microprocessors.

Filed Under: bullying, trademark
Companies: intel

Why Is NY, Not The FTC Or DOJ, Filing Antitrust Claims Against Intel?

from the grandstanding dept

I have no idea if Intel is really guilty of antitrust violations or not at this point -- though, considering the fact that its products keep getting faster and cheaper, it's not as if there's been some obvious huge monopoly rents handed out somewhere. However, I do find it quite odd that it's Andrew Cuomo, NY's Attorney General, filing antitrust charges against the company, rather than the federal government. The DOJ and the FTC have been investigating Intel for a while, and haven't yet filed charges. Europe has -- but Europe seems to do that against any successful American tech company eventually, as the European standard for "antitrust" often appears to be "big successful American company" rather than any proof of antitrust behavior. To have Cuomo file such a case just seems misplaced. What does it have to do with New York? Given Andrew Cuomo's rather long history of silly grandstanding to bully companies for the sake of getting his own name in the headlines, rather than any actual legal basis, it feels like more of the same. Pick a big target, don't worry about the legal specifics, but get headlines to build up the name of Andrew Cuomo. It's pretty sad that Cuomo seems to keep attacking innovative tech companies solely for the sake of building up his own political reputation. Tangling up innovation in pointless lawsuits doesn't help the economy in the slightest.

Filed Under: andrew cuomo, antitrust
Companies: intel

EU Antitrust Regulator Scolded For Simply Ignoring Evidence In Intel's Favor

from the well-that's-convenient dept

It's no secret that we think that EU antitrust regulators are way too aggressive in pursuing antitrust claims against US tech companies. The EU continues to view market size as a problem, rather than looking as closely at actual anticompetitive behavior. And, now, it's coming out that the EU's antitrust regulators may be so overzealous to take down companies that they'll ignore evidence that goes against their hypothesis. The EU's ombudsman has apparently issued a report scolding EU antitrust regulators for flat-out ignoring evidence from a Dell executive concerning Intel and AMD. The EU, as you probably know, fined Intel €1 billion a few months back, finding that the company had abused monopoly powers to force hardware makers into using its chips. But, the EU's ombud discovered that the antitrust regulators had interviewed Dell execs who said simply that AMD's chips didn't have the performance of Intel chips. In fact, in their tests, AMD's chips were "very poor," so they chose Intel chips entirely on the basis of performance. And... conveniently, the EU's antitrust regulators simply failed to record this info and did not include it in their report. Of course, you can make anyone appear to have violated antitrust rules if you purposely ignore all evidence to the contrary.

Filed Under: antitrust, eu
Companies: amd, dell, intel

Insight Community Webinar On Enterprise Knowledge Management

from the midmarket-innovators dept

A few weeks back, we had an Insight Community case, sponsored by Sun & Intel, soliciting proposals for a webinar on enterprise knowledge management, targeting mid-market companies. We're happy to announce that this Thursday, August 6th, at 9am PT, we'll be hosting that webinar, moderated by me, led by Joel Alleyne, a member of the Insight Community, and a widely recognized expert on knowledge management, along with some additional guests as well. If you're interested in enterprise knowledge management, especially in the mid-market, hopefully, you'll be able to attend. If you have any useful questions that you'd like addressed in the webinar, feel free to ask them here and we'll see what we can do!

Filed Under: knowledge management, mid-market innovation, webinar
Companies: intel, sun

Psion Gives Up Its Trademark Claim On 'Netbook'

from the hopefully-it-didn't-cost-too-much dept

Late last year, Psion kicked off a ridiculous legal fight, claiming that it owned the trademark on the word "netbook" and all of the companies offering "netbooks" today were infringing. While it is true that Psion had a (very different) product called a netBook many years ago, it had stopped offering it in the market, and the generic use of "netbook" was clearly referring to the new generation of small/cheap computers, having absolutely nothing to do with Psion's netBook. The whole purpose of trademark law is to avoid confusion of customers or some sort of misappropriation of brand value built up by the holder of the mark. That clearly was not the case here at all... and yet Psion continued to fight on. This week, the company finally withdrew its trademark claim after reaching some sort of "amicable settlement" with Intel. In all likelihood, this means Intel paid Psion to go away, though, one can hope that enough trademark attorneys explained to Psion that the company had almost no chance of succeeding in pushing its claim forward. There are certainly plenty of borderline trademark cases, but it's difficult to see how this one would even be in the same zipcode as a legitimate claim.

Filed Under: netbook, trademark
Companies: intel, psion

Psion Not Going Down Without A Fight Over The Netbook Trademark

from the this-won't-end-well dept

Late last year, Psion kicked off an attempt to reclaim the "netBook" trademark the company had largely abandoned years earlier, now that it was suddenly popular for reasons that had nothing to do with Psion's old discontinued netBook product. After making a big stink about it, both Dell and Intel moved to have Psion's trademark cancelled as abandoned. However, Psion is fighting back, not just with a response to the request to cancel, but with a lawsuit against Intel on a number of different fronts. Psion is claiming unfair business practices and also challenging Intel for "cybersquatting" on the netbook.com domain name. Of course, given that Psion was selling its product long before Intel had the name, you have to wonder how that's cybersquatting? Shouldn't Psion have tried to acquire the name back when it actually mattered? In the end, it seems like Psion is spending an awful lot of money to try to get the goodwill put into the "netbook" name by others over the past year and a half. It's a pretty obvious abuse of trademark law that hopefully a court will slap down.

Filed Under: netbooks, trademark
Companies: intel, psion

Trusted Computing Not So Trustworthy

from the but-of-course... dept

As pretty much anyone in computer security recognizes, any bit of "secure" computing is only secure for a limited period of time. Eventually, the security will be cracked. Yet, we still keep hearing about expectations for some new technologies to solve all our security problems. For example, we've been hearing for years about the wonders of "trusted computing," which basically gets mocked every time some company tries to roll it out (which is why it's gone through five or six name changes over the years). The latest news is that Intel's implementation of a trusted computing offering, called Trusted Execution Technology, has security vulnerabilities that allow it to be circumvented. In other words, it's not trustworthy, nor secure. Of course, it's not widely used, either, so it's not a big deal. But, once again, there is no magic bullet for security that solves all security problems.

Filed Under: security, trusted computing, vulnerabilities
Companies: intel

If You're Measuring Productivity In Hours, You're Doing It Wrong

from the output,-output,-output dept

Usually we don't see these types of stories until March Madness time, but the NY Times is writing about how much productivity is "lost" due to trying to keep up with the "data stream." Apparently research firm Basex has come out with a gimmicky calculator to determine how much productivity is likely lost, and put out a silly, borderline ridiculous press release noting that Intel claims it worked with the research firm to determine that the impact on productivity because of information overload was "up to eight hours a week." Seriously? Productivity is measured not in hours, but output. If productivity were just about hours, we'd be looking for ways to get people to work more hours. But, most people recognize that there are diminishing returns to making people work too much -- and they have time off to charge their batteries.

If you're going to measure productivity this way, we could just as easily say that we're putting out a study showing that sleeping costs a company approximately eight hours a day in lost worker productivity! Something must be done! While I have no doubt that information overload can be a cost to productivity, it's not going to be measured in hours. If I "waste" 20 hours a week dealing with information overload, but I'm able to extract information that makes me three times as productive, the rest of the week, then that's a good trade-off. Do people actually pay companies for this sort of research?

Filed Under: productivity
Companies: basex, intel

Intel Suing More Companies For Trademark Infringement

from the gotta-keep-the-lawyers-busy dept

Earlier this year, we mentioned that Intel was suing a travel agency for having the name Intellife Travel, despite the fact that trademark law is pretty clear that trademarks only cover specific areas of business, and Intel is not in the travel business. This wasn't the first time Intel had stretched trademark law, either. As we wrote last year, it was suing a jeans company as well. Law.com is running an article noting that Intel appears to have stepped up its trademark lawsuit campaign this year, filing 15 lawsuits already, including a recent one against Intellectric, an electrician in Southern California who has been using the name for years.

Intel, of course, claims it needs to sue to protect its name, but this is incorrect. It only needs to sue in clear cases of confusion or dilution. These names of companies in totally unrelated businesses (where there's no chance of confusion) are situations where there is no impact on Intel and they need not sue. There are some cases where it could make sense -- and I'll grant Intel's lawsuit against the research firm "Insider Intel" might make sense, given Intel's trademark on "Intel Inside," but many of these other lawsuits are ridiculous.

Yet, because many of the businesses are small, while Intel is huge, the businesses are forced to settle. Remember the travel agency? Rather than fight the lawsuit (which it almost certainly would have won), the company decided to settle, though it can't talk about the terms of the settlement.

Filed Under: trademark
Companies: intel

Time For A Moron In A Hurry To Explain The Difference Between Microprocessors And A Trip To China

from the it's-not-that-hard,-really dept

Intel is famous for being overly aggressive in trying to enforce its trademark, often claiming rights over almost any use of the prefix "intel" to anyone using the phrase "something inside," even if it's completely unrelated to the business that Intel is in. Trademark, of course, is not intended to give a company "ownership" of a word or phrase. Instead, it's a consumer protection system, designed to prevent consumers from being tricked into believing that they're buying a good from one company instead of another. That's why trademarks are only applicable in the business area that the company is using the mark. Thus, Johnny's Soda doesn't interfere with a trademark on Johnny's Dry Cleaning -- because they're totally separate businesses. That's also why we have the moron in a hurry test. If a "moron in a hurry" is unlikely to be confused by the use of the mark, then there's no trademark infringement.

Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped Intel from trying. Over the years they've gone after a maker of jeans (Intel Jeans), a marketing firm (for using the term INTELMARK for one of its products) and an artist's cooperative for using the name "Art Inside") among various other cases over the years. Its latest is to go after a travel agency called Intellife Travel that books trips between the US and China. The travel agency clearly explained to Intel that unless Intel's trademark covered the travel business, there was unlikely to be any infringement. Intel took a year to think about it... and then filed a lawsuit. Hopefully, Intel gets smacked down quickly on this clear abuse of trademark law.

Filed Under: microprocessors, moron in a hurry, trademark, travel
Companies: intel, intellife travel