Smartbook- Another Trademark Fight Coming?
The news that Psion and Intel have come to an amicable settlement to their “netbook” trademark fight was good to hear. The term “netbook” kind of snuck up on all of us who cover this stuff, and once it became widely used, it was only a matter of time before a trademark issue would arise. Psion had successfully trademarked “netbook” years ago, and it seems the standard practice is to defend your trademark or risk losing it.
We are just starting to see the term “smartbook” get used more frequently, and Qualcomm has adopted it to describe small laptops using its chips. This got me to thinking about another possible trademark fight down the road, so I decided to check to see if anyone has trademarked the “smartbook” name. It turns out that not only is the term trademarked, but by several different companies.
A quick search of official trademarks shows that there are 10 different “live” trademarks using the “smartbook” or “smartbooks” terms. These trademarks are not related to little laptops, but we know how companies are when it comes to protecting their turf. Could this come to bite Qualcomm and others down the road?
if there are already 10 “live” trademarks, what’s one more?
There is already a device called the Zupera Smartbook. Ironically, it is also running Windows CE, like the Psion Netbook.
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT9773759623.html
I forgot to mention the other Windows CE Smartbook, the Book Digital Smartbook G138.
http://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/hardware/bookdigital/smartbook-g138/
If the term “smartbook” does continue to be used, I think it should be reserved for small mobile computers (x86 or ARM) that include all of the typical smartphone hardware (3G, GPS, accelerometer, compass, etc.). This hardware enables “smartphone” functionality like location-based services, cell phone calls, SMS, automatic screen rotation, etc.
People wanting a “notebook-like” computer would get a “netbook” running a desktop OS (Windows,Ubuntu,…). People wanting a “smartphone-like” computer, would get a “smartbook” running a smartphone OS (Android,Symbian,WinMo,…).
While I’ve already checked this out (none of them appear to be applicable) that’s not to say that “smartbook” is a sensible name to adopt, nor that it hasn’t been registered in some other country and will float to the surface via Madrid Protocol over the coming 6 months.
Netbook is fine, it’s not a loaded term (“smart”book? how “smart”? “smart”phone is just as bad), and pretty much everyone now knows what it means.
Sam
Smartbook G138 was made by Book Digital.
Book Digital was the ODM for Zupra and a few others.
There is also a german Laptop manufacturer called Smartbook.
John
PS just in case the Smartbook G138 is ARM based, runs CE, has built in GPRS so prety similar. But maybe trademark is not active. Or maybe not in the US
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qYUijnm_QA&feature=related
Bare in mind this device came out in 2003 and uses a StrongArm 206Mhz. And it considerablly outperformaing an Elonex 1T