Lindows wins one against Microsoft

CNETAsia ^ | February 12 2004 | Jo Best

[fdsa2]

update The legal battle with Microsoft that has seen Linux reseller Lindows running a gantlet of courts over trademark infringement seems, for the moment, to be going in the open-source company's favor.

The naming spat has been running since 2001 and has seen Lindows lose out in similar wranglings in the Netherlands and Sweden.

The U.S. District Court in Seattle ruled Wednesday that the jury in the case should "consider whether the Windows mark was generic" before Windows 1.0 entered the marketplace in 1985. It also said that even if the "primary significance" of the term is not generic today--that is, has been displaced by the proprietary use--the trademark is not necessarily valid.

The upshot is that the open-source company can continue using its name for now, but legal hurdles remain. The judge postponed the current March 1 trial date, itself a delayed start, to an unspecified time, pending an appeal from Microsoft.

Microsoft has held that only present-day use of "windows" should be considered by the court to assess the current validity of the trademark. Company spokeswoman Stacy Drake said Microsoft would promptly pursue the appeals opportunity. "We're very encouraged the judge has granted our request to ask the Court of Appeals to provide guidance and clarity on this issue," she said.

Daniel Harris, Lindows' lead trial counsel, said in a statement that the win was a major blow to Microsoft. "The court's ruling confirms that a company, no matter how much money it spends, cannot buy a word out of the English language. These repeated filings by Microsoft are just another attempt to deplete our resources by dragging these legal proceedings on for as long as possible."

Microsoft, which hopes to ban the company from using its Windows-spoofing name, has had some court rulings go in its favor. For example, the Benelux injunction forced Lindows to stop selling or advertising its products, cancel all outstanding orders and stop users in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium from accessing its site.

[fdsa2]

Linux is one thing, but they might have been more creative concerning naming their product...

[goldstategop]

Microsoft has bought Michael Robertson and his start-up company publicity no amount of its own money could buy for them. And I run Lindows 4.5 on a laptop.

[observer5]

Microsh*t has stunk up the entire PC world with their endless stupidity and ignorance of computing. They have sucessfully destroyed a good standard called HTML and are continuing to destroy every programming and computing platform they can sabbotage.

If Osama had only targeted Microsoft headquarters (after evacuation), his picture would be hanging in my office!

[Bluntpoint]

Does Lindows call its fixes "Latches?"

Do they have a "Lupdate" page?

Is their operating system attacked by "Lorms" and "Liruses?"

[fdsa2]

LOL!!

[goldstategop]

Hehehe... Lindows does have antivirus software but its really not necessary. Linux has yet to be plagued by a tenth of the problems common to Windows.

[Bluntpoint]

Have there been any "trojan" penquins yet?

[marvlus]

Have there been any "trojan" penquins yet?

Don't you mean "lenquins"?

[Bluntpoint]

Lometimes Li lispeak. Lease lorgive le.

Lanks,

Luntpoint.

[AntiKev]

Lindows is a good idea, but I like Mandrake better for pure Penguin goodness. But isn't that what's great about open source? You can pick and choose what you want, and not have anything forced on you (*cough*Internot Exploder*cough*). There are a variety of browser choices for Linux, just as an example. There's Konqueror, Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla Firefox 0.8, etc. For Windows...well Mozilla runs on Windows...but they still haven't broken into the market. I can see Linux becoming a viable desktop operating system, with Mandrake 9.2. The install was completely painless, and it comes with enough programs to get you off and running. Let the mindless use Windows, and everyone else can choose an alternate.

[ANRCHTN]

Open Source

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> [PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux] IS the way to go.







Separation of content/concept/design_________ \|/[]||

[ryanjb2]

"But isn't that what's great about open source? You can pick and choose what you want, and not have anything forced on you (*cough*Internot Exploder*cough*)."

Internet Explorer is forced on no one. If someone makes the free choice to purchase and install Windows or a computer pre-loaded with Windows, then by now they know that Internet Explorer comes with it.

"There are a variety of browser choices for Linux, just as an example."

There are also a variety for Windows.

"There's Konqueror, Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla Firefox 0.8, etc."

Konqueror is a bad browser, it came pre-loaded ("forced" upon me!) with KDE on the SuSE Linux distribution I have installed on my computer. And whats this about Konqueror intergrating itself at various points of the visual interface? I thought when Microsoft did that it was bad, so what about now?

"For Windows...well Mozilla runs on Windows...but they still haven't broken into the market. "

So? Windows users have the free choice to use Mozilla if they wish, no one at Microsoft is preventing them from installing it. Because it hasn't "broken into the market," doesn't mean any wrongdoing on Microsoft's part. Internet Explorer is a great browser - thats why it has the market share it does.

"The install was completely painless, and it comes with enough programs to get you off and running. "

The install for my SuSE Linux was also completely painless, but the pre-installed applications (all forced upon me!) are mostly low quality, IMHO.

"Let the mindless use Windows, and everyone else can choose an alternate."

So those who choose Windows are mindless? What utter nonsense. I have both Windows XP and Linux on my PC. I am a fairly technical person and I find myself using Linux only to learn Linux, and using Windows to get things done.

[Chad Fairbanks]

If Osama had only targeted Microsoft headquarters (after evacuation), his picture would be hanging in my office!

Nice. Real nice. Makes me want to run right out and start using Linux. /sarcasm

[avg_freeper]

If Osama had only targeted Microsoft headquarters (after evacuation), his picture would be hanging in my office!

That's a completely asinine comment. Just because I don't like chevys that doesn't mean I want their property and the capital of millions of private investors annihilated. It's just a hunk of copper, silicon, and plastic that You've chosen to use.

If computers cause you that much anguish go become a lama rancher, a carpenter, or anything else for goodness sakes.

[edchambers]

(snip)So those who choose Windows are mindless? What utter nonsense. I have both Windows XP and Linux on my PC. I am a fairly technical person and I find myself using Linux only to learn Linux, and using Windows to get things done.(snip)

I like you.I have two PCs networked together and use Dos6.2 Win98, and XP.I started to install Linux but the fact that it didn't have a simple install program bugged me and I still can't think of a legitimate reason to have it.

[SpinyNorman]

Internet Explorer is forced on no one. If someone makes the free choice to purchase and install Windows or a computer pre-loaded with Windows, then by now they know that Internet Explorer comes with it.

That avoids the question. They have purposely intengrated it into the operating system for the sole purpose of crushing Netscape and other browsers. I believe a gentleman from Australia made a program that could cull the program out of Windows, but I think MS either bought him out or sued him into submission.

The whole question of being "forced on someone" recalls the whole Windows preloading debacle. Becoming a defacto standard by prearranging deals with OEMs is hardly what I would call a popular choice. It is analogous to saying that if Yugos were given away with each house sale, that Yugos were the popular choice of homeowners. If you had a free car, regardess of its suspect reliability, wouldn't it be taken and used in lieu of a car you had to go out and buy separately? And remember when they deliberately put code into early versions of Windows to make it so an MSDOS competitor, DRDOS, would not work with Windows?

The install for my SuSE Linux was also completely painless, but the pre-installed applications (all forced upon me!) are mostly low quality, IMHO.

Most of the apps that come with Windows are pretty low quality too. Try out StarOffice for the quality you want. I believe that most of the provided apps can be unselected on a custom install. To be sure, a comparison of proprietary Windows and the many flavors of open source Linux isn't quite an apples and apples comparison at the "forced on" level. With IBM, Sun, and others, Linux will be a viable and powerful competitor to MS, that will do more via competition to improve both products that any MS monopoly would. You simply have to look at the AMD/Intel competition to see that.

With all due respect, don't put anything past MS.

[OPS4]

Microsoft has brought the computer to millions of people around the world. Without the Windows OS,many people would still not have a computer.

No company has a perfect system, and probably never will.

Ops4 God Bless America!

[krb]

That avoids the question. They have purposely intengrated it into the operating system for the sole purpose of crushing Netscape and other browsers.

That's not entirely true. It is integrated into the OS for many, many reasons, and only one of them is to crush the competition.

As a programmer, I find the automatic access to the internet explorer activeX control a godsend. I can prototype applications with full anti-aliasing support, printing, print preview, animated GIF, streaming video, etc. support in seconds. Extremely valuable to know it's on all windows platforms without needing to install extra stuff, or to sniff around to make sure the components are there before installing my stuff.

[pau1f0rd]

All your word are belong to us

[Snowy]

Try out StarOffice for the quality you want.

I find Open Office to be much better (there is also a windows version). And, Ximian Evolution is a perfect alternative to Microsoft Outlook. I have been using only Linux at home for only about a week (RH 9), but I have not seen anything I can't do yet with Linux that I could with Windows. Also, "Gimp" is Linux's answer to Photoshop, and I'm currently using Mozilla Firebird, and with its tabbed browsing, leaves Internet Exploder dead in the water.