[Am-info] Microsoft Releasing Records to Lindows

[Hans Reiser]

Roy Bixler wrote:

>On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 07:22:16PM +0300, Hans Reiser wrote:
>  
>
>>Confusing consumers is not good.  People have too much to do in life 
>>besides learning about every scamster.   Reputation is important to 
>>functional capitalism, and undermining reputation by allowing imitations 
>>of trademarks is bad.
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, but are you commenting on the Supreme Court case
>
Supreme court case.

> or the Lindows
>case here?  The Lindows case is not so simple since part of it deals
>with the question of whether Microsoft has a valid trademark in
>Windows at all.
>
It does not.  It is a stupidly unimaginative name for what was once 
primarily a windowing system.

>  Assuming that they do, then the question comes in of
>whether the Lindows name is close enough to Windows to cause
>confusion.
>
Lindows is a valid trademark because it is sufficiently distinct from a 
generic pre-existing term, Windows is not.

Windows is better than "OS" as a trademark, but not by a lot.

>  I'd say that neither of these points is a slam dunk case
>for Microsoft.
>
>R.
>_______________________________________________
>Am-info mailing list
>Am-info@lists.essential.org
>http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/am-info
>
>
>  
>
I thought John's comment about them bleeding Lindows was on target.  MS 
has a lot more money (maybe 10x ? ) than all the free software producers 
combined, so they can win with such games.

-- 
Hans