Taking one for the team?
It's been a busy week for the tech industry's lawyers. Intel did its bit earlier in the week and now Dell has decided that it's offended by the ownership of ‘Netbook' as a trademark by Psion Teklogix, which these days specialises in ruggesdised PDAs for industry.
The petition was made earlier this week by Dell, which feels it is "damaged" by the registration of the trademark. Dell is claiming that, while Psion used to offer products using the netbook brand, it no longer does so and has no plans to, so it has effectively abandoned the netbook trademark.
A look at the Psion Teklogix website reveals a discontinued product called the NETBOOK PRO, which was apparently launched in 2003. There is no sign of a current product using that name.
The petition gets a bit more tasty when it goes on to accuse Psion of fraud. Dell reckons a statement made by Psion in 2006 claiming it has used the trademark for five consecutive years from 21 November 2000 was false and thus invalidates the registration.
Dell concludes that the current generic use of the term ‘netbook' to describe small, cheap laptops renders the registration invalid anyway.
What isn't clear is why Dell feel damaged by this trademark and why it's Dell rather than any other maker of netbooks, or indeed Intel, which introduced the term to describe small, cheap laptops that is bringing the action.
Presumably Dell doesn't want to claim the trademark for itself, so are we meant to believe it's doing this on behalf of the entire tech industry? That's nice of it...
UPDATE - 25 February 2009: It looks like Intel has also joined the action.
