Psion has issued a rather surprising response to challenges to its “netbook” trademark from Intel and Dell. Those companies claim that Psion essentially abandoned its rights to the trademark when it stopped manufacturing the original Psion Netbook and Psion Netbook Pro a a few years back. But Psion sent a letter to tech blog jkOnTheRun that explains that while the company isn’t manufacturing Netbooks anymore, it does still sell them.

Wait… what?

Here’s the deal. Psion doesn’t sell its Netbook products directly to consumers through retail outlets. But the company is marketing and selling them “in the highly specialized supply chain logistics area” in the US and European Union.

Well, this certainly puts a different spin on things. If Psion is actively selling a product called a Netbook, then perhaps the company can claim rights to the trademark it received back in 2003. But it’s still not clear why exactly Psion waited until chip makers, computer makers, retailers, bloggers, and journalists had been using the term “netbook” generically for the better part of a year before the company started trying to enforce its trademark.

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5 replies on “Psion: We’re still selling netbooks”

  1. They also effectively banned the word Netbook from Adwords, which does threaten the Adsense income of blogs about netbooks…

  2. This looks like a heavy FUD gimmick attack. Seriously, is this even necesary?

    Anyways, it looks like everything is turning into a trademark. I think that most of humankind errors are getting against ourselves. This year and the next ones something big is going to happen, like Duke Nukem Forever’s release or worldwide peace. Lol.

  3. [“in the highly specialized supply chain logistics area” in the US and European Union]

    My translation: Two locations in each country, across the street from the courthouse
    and across the street from the Trademark offices. 😉

    1. more likely specialist dealers.

      used psions from 1994-2002. briliant machines. the predecessor to the netbook was the psion 7 which i really really wanted but they were unavailable in ireland and rather expensive. the netbook used wince and was the kiss of death for psion. most of the psion users i knew jumped to palm when the netbook was launched.

      the netbooks were targeted to large corporations from day 1 who wanted a solid little machine that lasted all day. not really surprised that they are still selling to that market.

  4. Maybe Psion waited a year so the use of “netbook” by the big boys would be very firmly entrenched and there would be no trouble establishing their “guilt” for a possible law suit, settlement, or royalties.

    By the way, I thought a trade mark was a trade mark. Does this mean that, if Coca-Cola stopped bottling drinks for three years, I could take over their trade mark?

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