Lindows Legal Challenge

pphrdza was one of several readers who sent in the latest on the Lindows front - it's a Ny Times (Free reg. blah blah) article entitled Glass Panes and Software. Not a whole lot of new information - more around the legal challenge blah blah.

Re:Non reg ver.

[ccady]

That does not work for me, but this [nytimes.com] does

No-reg-required link

[Uninvited Guest]

Google news [nytimes.com]

Re:Who here has legs

[MindStalker]

Read the article it states that there are different levels of trademark protection. Quote from the article. Trademark law affords the greatest protection to words that are fanciful or arbitrary, like Apple. Next in line for legal protection are names that are suggestive of what a product does, like Huggies. Next comes a descriptive term, which describes an attribute of a product, and last come names that are generic, or widely understood to mean a category of products. Generic terms cannot be trademarked. So Apple has it clearly, as the word Apple has nothing to do with computers, same with Armada, Expedition is use suggestive and Perl is arbitrary. Anyways, taking away the Windows trademark wouldn't nessesarly keep microsoft from calling it that. And "Microsoft Windows" would still be trademarkd, as well as "Windows XP" as the XP makes it unique.

Re:It's Microsoft, what did you think would happen

[SailorBob]

What are you talking about? The article is about trademark law. Back in the day, Microsoft was granted a trademark on the name Windows.

Uhhh, back in the day? According to the article Microsoft first applied for a trademark in 1993 and was rejected. Borland had some pending trademarks on names which included Windows. Microsoft bought those pending trademarks, and in 1995 was issued a trademark on "Windows." Hardly back in the day. ;-)

Re:Who here has legs

[aufait]

I'm very curious to see some proof of this

From the article:

Lindows .com submitted declarations from expert witnesses and trade press articles from the 1980's, when several software companies were offering desktop environments. They spoke of the "window wars" of those years and had headlines like "Microsoft Does Windows." In his order last March, Judge Coughenour denied Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction in a 29-page order indicating that the little-known defendant had scored some points.

If you want the actual references,you will have to dig up the court documents yourself.

Re:X Window System

[MamasGun]

Development on the XWindow system at MIT started in 1984 [linux-mag.com]. This was during the conflict between Borland and Microsoft over the "windows" name. However, both Xerox PARC and Apple were using the generic term "window" long before that time.