“Save the Netbooks” campaign launches
“Save the Netbooks”
That’s the name of the new grassroots campaign and website that sprung up today with the sole mission of fighting the trademark threat that Psion poses with their recent legal action taken against anyone who uses the term netbook (this includes hardware manufacturers, advertisers, journalists, us bloggers, and of course retailers). We first caught wind of cease and desist letters being sent out back in December – with Psion giving websites up until March to remove the term “netbook” from their website.
This whole battle revolves around the fact that Psion trademarked the “netbook” keyword back when it had a product called the Psion netbook. While the product has long since been retired, Psion is now attempting to enforce the trademark (which has been made popular thanks to Intel, ASUS, Acer, and many others) claiming “Psion places significant value on its trade mark registration and your use of the term ‘netbook’ could damage those registrations. We are therefore asking you to cease use of the term ‘netbook’”. The company even managed to convince Google of banning the term “netbook” from their Adsense ads (just great Google…).
So what was there for us netbook lovers to do?
Create an online campaign of course and that’s where “Save the Netbooks” comes into play. This campaign has a single goal in mind – getting Psion Teklogix to abandon their “offending trademarks”. According to Sam Johnston, Strategic Consultant for the campaign, “We also believe that the term [netbook] is a generic description for a class of products rather than the specific meaning they intended, and that it should not have been afforded trademark protection in the first place as it is merely descriptive. Furthermore, at $1,299 the device would not even have met one of the key criteria for netbooks were it available today: price. “.
As I stated earlier, while I’m all for trademark protection, there comes a time when a term just doesn’t mean what you originally meant it to mean. If Psion continued their netbook product line and had a successful business out of it, I could understand.. but the truth is – Psion has done nothing with the term for several years except sell meaningless accessories to the folks who did buy the machine back in the late 90’s. With that in mind, I can’t help but be a proponent for this campaign.
The first mission for Save the Netbooks is to try and reverse the Google AdWords ban on the term “netbook”. If you want to help out, read this blog posting on the “Save the Netbooks” website on how.
Finally, join the fight – help all of us convince Psion to do the right thing. I for one will always call my three netbooks.. well.. netbooks!
[Check it out via Ars Technica]
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