Advertisement

Dell: Netbook Term Can’t Be Trademark

February 19th, 2009 by Avram Piltch  

dell-petitionIn December, Canadian-based Psion, which has registered the term “netbook” as a trademark, started sending cease and desist letters to sites that were using the term to refer to something other than the Psion netbook, which is no longer made, but was at one time a cross between a laptop and a PDA.  Psion’s lawyers later clarified its position that they were only going after companies that use the term netbook in for-profit text like advertising and marketing.

It almost goes without saying that Psion is picking a fight with some big companies. Intel has been using the term netbook generically to describe small, low-cost, low-power laptops for a while now and even runs the site netbook.com, extolling their virtues. Amazon refers to Eee PCs, Acer Aspire Ones, and HP Minis as netbooks when listing them for sale. Sylvania Computers names one of their small notebooks the g Netbook Meso. And Dell refers to its Inspiron Mini 9 as a “laptop / netbook” on Dell.com.

Now, Dell has taken a stand on behalf of themselves and a good chunk of the laptop industry by filing a petition (read the PDF) to have Psion’s trademark registration overturned. In the petition, Dell claims three grounds for overturning Psion’s trademark:

  1. Abandonment – Dell claims that Psion “intends not to resume bona fide use of the Netbook name in ordinary trade.”
  2. Fraud – Dell says that Psion’s trademark was granted under false pretenses because “the U.S. Patent and Trademark office would not have allowed Registration No. 2,404,976 [this registration] to remain valid absent Registrant’s knowingly  false statements and false specimen.”
  3. Genericness – Dell also says that “the term ‘netbook’ has become generic in that the primary significance of the term to the relevant pubilc is as the name for small and inexpensive laptop computers.”

If Dell does not win, then either the entire industry will have to go with another term (we suggest “mini-notebook”). Notebook vendors from Taiwan to Texas will be watching to see how the U.S. Patent Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board rules.

Hat Tip: Engadget
 Comments (5 Responses) 

Our Related Content

From Other Sites

Related Deals

Powered by: 

5 Responses to “Dell: Netbook Term Can’t Be Trademark”

  1. Save the Netbooks Says:
    February 19th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Ok so there are (at least) two problems with your “mini-notebook” suggestion:

    1> A Netbook is an “Internet Notebook” (a portmanteau). Size doesn’t matter and indeed as evidenced by the rapid tread away from small screen sizes, a large screen is an assed for Internet. Nor does price – there’s nothing wrong with having a dedicated browsing device of Apple quality (and cost). That rules out most of the alternative suggestions for which there are perfectly good alternatives like subnotebook or ultra-portable.

    2> By the time this decision is made there will be (according to analyst estimates) over 25,000,000 netbook users in the wild and another 100,000 added every day. How do you plan to educate them that their netbook isn’t a netbook? What about the massive windfall for Psion suddenly becoming the only vendor allowed to sell a machine under this moniker? Do they deserve that? And the industry that has built up around the term?

    Better we just stand our ground and get this over and done with.

    Save the Netbooks

  2. schnapp Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 3:21 am

    “If Dell does not win, then either the entire industry will have to go with another term (we suggest “mini-notebook”).”

    No dude! you readers are users, not manufacturers. We (and you?) will bloody well call them what we bloody well feel like, ‘mkay? Thus making the term generic, by the way.

    Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!Netbook!

  3. Nicolas Grignon Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 9:50 am

    How about a WEBook? ten of thousand millions lawsuit avoided and everybody’s happy…. (maybe I should patent this one… ;-) ) seriously, some comon name shouldn’t be allowed a patent, what next: patent the color RED?

  4. ikkefc3 Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    I regret this. If Dell wins, another chance to get rid of the “netbook” term is lost (I don’t like the term), but mini-notebook is just ridiculous. They use that term everywere in The Netherlands and I don’t like it. It just doesn’t sound right.

  5. Dag Says:
    March 12th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    This is so current why are we not using it now?

Leave a Reply

Featured Sponsors