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 Gets Google To Ban 'Netbook' In Ads

from the doesn't-look-that-way... dept

Late last year, we wrote about Psion's attempt to reclaim the word "netbook." Years back, the company had a marginally popular product with that name -- though it no longer offers such a product. The company was apparently upset at the commercial use of the word "netbook" which is commonly being used to describe cheap, small laptops like the EeePC. jkOnTheRun now has a story -- direct from Psion PR -- claiming that Google has agreed to block Google ads that use the term after recognizing that Psion has a trademark on the term.

Of course, advertisers can still advertise using the keyword "netbooks" but are apparently barred from actually using the word in the advertisement itself. So a search on "netbooks" still shows ads -- just none of those ads say "netbooks" anywhere. Thus, if you look at the netbooks search, you see all the ads refer to things like "mini notebooks."

This seems pretty pointless all around. As much as Psion may wish it still holds onto the name of a product it stopped selling years ago, the term has become generically accepted as referring to this generation of small and cheap notebook computers. Psion has had nothing to do with the current value in the word, and its attempt to take back control over the word it abandoned years ago is not, at all, what trademark law was intended to allow.

Filed Under: ads, adwords, netbook, trademarks
Companies: google, psion