Microsoft asked U.S. Dist. Court, Seattle, to reconsider prelimin...

Lindows.com with trademark infringement and unfair competition under Lanham Act. Software giant argued use of names Lindows.com and LindowsOS traded off goodwill of Windows trademark and would cause confusion among prospective buyers of Windows products and dilute ability of Microsoft’s trademark to distinguish its products from competing products. But Coughenour said “at most, Microsoft has raised serious questions about the validity of its trademark, but has fallen short” of showing Lindows.com should be prevented from using names as part of its business. He also said “there is indirect evidence that Microsoft considered Windows to be generic at the time it began using the trademark” -- so much so that when company first released Windows in 1985 it referred to operating system as “Microsoft Windows 1.0.” In asking court to reconsider decision, Microsoft said “a fundamental misapprehension of the test for ‘genericness’ led the court to conclude ‘Lindows.com has presented sufficient evidence [of genericness] to rebut the presumption of validity of the Windows [trademark].’ Whether the term ‘windows’ was generic in the mid- 1980s for one of many features shared by different software products is not the question the court must reconsider. Rather, the appropriate question is whether ‘Windows’ is generic for operating system software.”