[Sussex] lin---s.com

[Steve Dobson]

Hi All

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 01:29:46PM +0000, Geoff Teale wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 08:00 -0500, Jon Fautley wrote:
<snip>
> > However, that doesn't seem to be what Lindows is doing. It's called 
> > Lindows beacuse it's a crossover of Windows and Linux... Lindows and 
> > Windows are two different products, with two different marketplaces, 
> > with two different names. 
> 
> Jon, this is not what has happened at all.  Microsoft have established
> in a court of law that Lindows deliberately set out to use a variant of
> the name of Microsoft's product in order to garner attention based on
> Microsoft's reputation and standing.  Lindows derived profit at the
> expense of Microsoft.  Microsoft can thus legitimately claim to have
> suffered damage as a result of Lindows deliberate actions against them.
> Moreover they can show that Lindows deliberately abused their trademark,
> questioned their goodwill (with out basis) and thus decreased the value
> of that considerable asset.
>
> There is no case for accidental harm here.

Baldrick I have a cunning plan :-)

Lets find and obsolete OS - wrap a load of poor GUI software around it
and call it WinDOZE.  Then wait to see if M$ come to court to prove that 
WinDOZE is strongly associated with one of their products.
 
> The court in ruling that Lindows should not be allowed to continue
> causing them said harm is doing explicitly what any sane human being
> would expect them to do.
> 
> The argument that Lindows is in a different marketplace is frankly utter
> crud, and as this case is not fraud but a civil C&D action the fact that
> the names are subtly different is irrelevant.
> 
> Other examples of such actions include the mid 80's case in which CBS/
> Fender successfully stopped Tokai from producing guitars with a logo
> that was similar (but subtly different) to the "spaghetti" logo used on
> Fender guitars and a very similar headstock.

Then what about NG cars?

Steve