trademarks

Wow, it's been a busy month for major news events! I hope you didn't miss all CNET's great coverage of the 2010 trade show for electronic consumer goods and devices, held back in January.

And on Sunday, our publisher, CBS, will air a fabulous contest between two teams engaged in a (hopefully) thrilling game of gridiron football. And the opening festivities of the quadrennial snow season international athletic competition will have you glued to your seat on February 12!

Don't know what I'm talking about? That's the point. Welcome, friends, to the way the … Read more

I imagine that everyone in the Googleplex, while not being exactly replicant-natured, reads many of the same books, watches many of the same movies, and shops online on the same polo shirt site.

Perhaps that is why my sympathy nodule is twiddling at the news that the family of the author Philip K. Dick is reportedly considering legal action at the name of the new Google phone.

Dick is the author of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" a novel in which owners of animals are rather cool and androids struggle with the concept of empathy. In this … Read more

There are those who believe that Microsoft came up with the name Bing for its refreshed search engine after staring at the word "Bingo" for several days and then removing the last letter.

However, a small entity in St. Louis has decided that the name Bing was, is and always should be, theirs.

According to Ars Technica, Bing Information Design! has designs on some compensation from Microsoft, as it has used the delightful term, followed by a slightly less delightful exclamation point, ala Yahoo, since 2000.

Even to the most bleary eyes, Bing Information Design's Web site … Read more

"Tweet" might be a word that has been popularized by Twitter, but that doesn't mean that the social network will be able trademark it.

According to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office documents found by blogger Sam Johnston, Twitter's application for a trademark on "tweet" has been preliminarily denied.

Twitter originally filed for the trademark on April 16. In the application, the company expressed its desire to use tweet "through the applicant's related company or licensee the mark in commerce on or in connection with the identified goods and/or services." … Read more

According to Nvidia on Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has initially rejected an additional eight Rambus claims that Nvidia challenged.

The additional eight claims are based on two patents that Rambus has asserted against Nvidia in litigation. This follows the USPTO's rejection last month of 41 other claims in seven patents that Rambus had asserted, Nvidia said.

Rambus filed patent claims against Nvidia in an International Trade Commission action in November. The ITC litigation involves memory controllers--which handle communications between memory chips and other silicon--related to graphics processors.

"We are pleased that the USPTO decided … Read more

On today's show, we discover that Microsoft is a fine American company that thinks nothing of shafting its highest-paying users or subjecting the entire Internet to multiple episodes of projectile vomiting. And Apple shouldn't be forced by some pissy little upstart to change its perfectly legitimate EULA. And don't even get Cooley STARTED on sending self-replicating nanobots to Mars. Good times all around. Plus: Metrologists!

Microsoft to offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1145… Read more

Google has been sued again by a company mad over the use of its trademarks as keywords, but this one comes with a twist.

Ascentive, the company behind those incessant "Finally Fast!" PC support ads, became the latest Google advertiser to sue the company for allowing advertisers to purchase ads using trademarks they do not own as search keywords. It will have to get in line behind Firepond, Rescuecom and several other companies challenging Google's policy, recently expanded to allow some companies to use trademarks they don't own in the text of their ads.

Ascentive takes … Read more

It's safe to assume game developer Blizzard has some big deals on its slate of unannounced projects, but new filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office suggest one of them is particularly dire. Game industry sleuthing site superannuation on Wednesday unearthed a trio of Blizzard applications filed last Friday, each covering various uses of the word "cataclysm."

One filing covers the use of the term as it relates to computer games and mouse pads. The second seeks to lock up the name for use in entertainment services (specifically online games), and the third covers a … Read more

Is Twitter getting possessive of its own name? Maybe.

A developer building an application using Twitter's API was told via e-mail that Twitter took issue with the user interface of his application, allegedly very similar to Twitter's own, as well as his use of the word "tweet" in the application's name.

The developer forwarded the e-mail to TechCrunch: "Twitter, Inc., is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own."

Uh-oh. If Twitter is staking a claim to the word "tweet," … Read more