Intel and Dell join hands in fight against Netbook trademark

Earlier this month, Dell had requested the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the “netbook” term as a trademark. Dell had laid the blame on Psion’s Herb Turzer, senior product manager, of being untruthful about the usage of the term in 2005. Dell brought to the fore that Psion was no more having control over the trademark as it had allowed the term to become a routine portrayal and usage.

Intel has now joined hands with Dell and other companies in the clash against Psion over the same “netbook” trademark issue. They are throwing light on the fact that the public is already using the term in a wide manner to represent “extensions of the notebook category, smaller computers purpose-built for mobile Internet access”.

Intel is insisting that since the term “netbook” which was originally owned by Psion from the year 2000,  is now popularly being used for the category of new small, low cost laptops, the court should cancel a trademark for the term.

PC manufacturers have had a mixed response to the term, “netbook”. The term is used by several of them in advertisements and portrayals, but many have decided not to use the term deliberately foreseeing future issues. Earlier Psion had persuaded Google to forbid the use of the term in adsense ads, and also filed cases against many other companies warning them of strict action if they did not cease to use the term. A small organization intended to fight against this but it was with the entry of Dell who filed a suit against Psion, that the movement became prominent.

Now Intel has filed a hard-hitting 13 page suite against Psion with some interesting arguments. Intel points out that the term is widely used by vendors, press and consumers to describe the devices from different brands. Some of the points in the filing are similar to those raised by Dell.

Now there is a chance that Intel will crush Psion in the case but it could also be the other way round. Even though there are many strong points against using the term as a trademark in their filing, there are a couple of things which could bother Intel and lead them to losing the case. This will happen if the court finds out that Intel was using the term for commercial purposes even before it became a generic term, in which case, the case could turn against their favour.

With the filing of this suit, Intel is now a part of two netbook confrontations, the other being their effort to safeguard their netbook narrative version. Intel’s revenue is not as good now as it used to be and so it is all the more important for them to be on the winning side in these netbook filings.