Windows seek copyright for clouds

For any marketer, the Internet is an untapped field of diverse branding opportunities. Just look at the number of applications that go to government organizations for the registration of new trademarks.

Registration applications fell during the “Internet bubble”, reaching its climax in 2000, after which they plummeted by two years and then began to grow again, exceeding a record high of 394,000 applications last year.

Recently on the map of branding wars there has been another front.
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It is not associated with attempts to register as a brand new business, website address or online logo. At this time, companies are trying to stick their brand on, still a vague collection of goods and services, in some imaginary cyberspace, known as “cloud computing” (computing cloud).

Cloud computing is usually referred to as Internet services or programs that a person uses through an Internet browser on his computer, phone, or other device. In other words, this is a service that is provided to the user remotely, from a certain place somewhere in the “computer cloud”, in the manner of a search service.

Dell has attempted to register the term "cloud computing". However, in August, the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced that the term could not be subject to copyright.

Dell applied for registration two years ago, when the concept of “cloud computing” was less popular in the computer industry, but it was rejected because of the protests that came from experts in the computer industry, due to the fact that the concept of “cloud computing "Has become a widespread term and is not associated with any particular company. Dell may appeal this decision, but this is unlikely.

In recent years, it is patents rather than trademarks that have been in the center of attention of courts and private property specialists, especially in connection with the question of the extent to which copyright on the principles of computer software and business models become an obstacle to innovation.

Meanwhile, some lawyers argue that the ownership of the trademark may be the subject of new heated debate, especially in connection with the Internet.

“The trademark is a sleeping giant of intellectual property,” says a British law professor.

Microsoft, for example, is developing a technology that will allow a person to synchronize the data of all his personal computing devices, including even the devices of family members and employees, thanks to an automatic transfer to a computer "cloud".

When, last year, Microsoft introduced its development, it was announced that the technology would be called Live Mesh. What it is, and how it will work, was still unclear, however, in the summer, Microsoft applied for a trademark registration.

The terms “mesh” and “mesh networking” are widely used in connection with various device networking technologies.

“This is not an easy task for our experts,” said an employee of the Bureau for Patents and Trademarks. "It is necessary to accurately determine the most commonly used meanings of concepts that arise almost suddenly."

According to lawyers, the problem of the right to trademark will be the most pressing in the Internet era. Instant messages, aggressive business tactics and uncertain legal rules create all the conditions for the topic of trademark rights to be raised more and more often.

The first round of fights for the right to a brand on the Internet has already taken place, the cause of which was cybersquatting. Cybersquatters bought domain names that coincide with the names of well-known brands, and then tried to resell them to these companies for fabulous money.

In 1999, the US Congress issued a law that companies have the right to sue anyone who “knowingly for profit” buys a domain name consonant with a well-known trademark. In the same year, the non-profit organization for the assignment of names and addresses on the Internet established a system for resolving similar disputes over domain names.

According to lawyers, the new “erogenous zone” of the conflict will be an attempt by trademark owners to silence criticism of their own products and prohibit buying the names of their trademarks as keywords when ordering Internet search advertising.

Preliminary decisions of the court on the issue of keywords indicate an unregulated legal field and international differences in legislation regarding trademark rights. According to lawyers, the US courts are inclined to allow any user to buy keywords that correspond to brand names. For example, Ford can buy ads in search results for the keyword Toyota, and all users who search for Toyota will see a link to the Ford website in the right column of Google search results.

In the US, this state of affairs is considered quite acceptable in relation to the consumer. Google also states that since any auction participant can bid for any of the keywords - Google does not set any restrictions - it does not use whose trademarks. “We do not use keywords, we do not sell keywords, we sell advertising space,” says the trademark officer at Google.

However, in 2005, a French court ruled that Google was obliged to prevent its advertisers from buying the trademark of French manufacturer Louis Vuitton as a keyword. For countries other than the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, Google is responsible for ensuring that its customers respect the trademark rights and, therefore, rights holders in these countries have the ability to prevent their own brands from being purchased as keywords.

Due to the speed of Internet communications and the tightening of brand competition for free market niches, the principles for the existence of brands have changed dramatically. Compare the fierce battle of companies that began with the term "cloud computing" before it really got accustomed, with how Microsoft gradually grew the Windows trademark step by step.

The window interface was used on personal computers long before Microsoft announced plans in 1983 to create a Windows operating system. The first version was introduced in 1985, but Microsoft filed an application for trademark registration only in 1990. The application was rejected as “merely descriptive,” that is, of a purely descriptive nature that does not indicate a relationship with a specific manufacturer.

However, as often happened, Microsoft continued to struggle. She invested resources in advertising, branding and product development. Finally, she presented to the Bureau the results of research, according to which, people began to associate the term “Windows” with Microsoft, and in 1995 the commission agreed to register a trademark.

In the history of the Live Mesh, Microsoft acts much more actively and more purposefully. The company sees the word “Live”, which it uses in its products such as Windows Live and Xbox Live, as half of the two-syllable trademark. “Mesh networking is a general category, but Live Mesh is Microsoft’s own implementation and works like a proxy index,” says Microsoft’s brand manager.

In addition to other things that the Internet has changed beyond recognition, you should call the Trademark Office itself. One of the employees of the bureau recalled how, in 1979, when she had just joined a bureau, the search for similar trademarks, when considering a new application, began in the “search room”. Applications and registration documents were in wooden boxes, in alphabetical order.

Images of trademarks contained specifically, divided into separate visual categories, such as "human figures" and "human parts of the body."

In order to quickly flip through the card file and not damage the paper, the expert put on special rubber fingertips, but since then the technology has stepped forward. Today, most of the work is done with the help of computers, by searching on the Internet and specialized databases. 85 percent of the 390 Bureau experts work from home.

The search room turns into a museum of the printing press era.