Microsoft Sued Over Use of 'Bing' Name
A company named Bing! Information Design has filed suit alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition.
Bing! Information Design, a St. Louis, Missouri-based company that provides computer-related illustrations, has used the name Bing since 2000. PC World reports that the company applied to register the trademark "Bing!" on May 26 but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records refused the application on Aug. 25, giving the company six months to file supporting information. Microsoft filed for the trademark "Bing" on May 2.
A Microsoft spokesperson said they're aware of the suit as they had heard about it through the media but said they had not been served with a complaint yet.
"We believe this suit to be without merit and we do not believe there is any confusion in the marketplace with regard to the complainant's offerings and Microsoft's Bing product," the spokesman said.
If the case holds water it could spell trouble for Microsoft. The company has spent millions just advertising Bing and a name change would be ruinous.
Read more on the suit here.
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Sad really, if you wanted to trademark the name then you should have done it sometime in the past 9 years. Can't fault Microsoft for using it.
Aren't these the same guys that sued Mike Rowe for using mikerowesoft?
I'm so over hearing about lawsuits. Are there usually this many and I've just been ignorant to them or does it seem like everyone is suing everyone in the past 12 months.
I think this will have about as much impact as Word being court ordered to be pulled from shelves will have. Absolutely none.
Leave... Brittany... err, Microsoft... Alone!
If you have a unique name, you trademark it, when you come up with it, not 8-9 years later as this article implies.
Looks like MS got to it first, plain and simple.
it's simple: someone find an easy way to make some money!
If Microsoft loses the case, does this mean they will do another contest to find another crappy theme song?
Sounds like a open and shut case if Microsoft beat them to the trademark office.
Lame
If we go by technicalities Microsoft's Bing doesn't have an exclaimation point. Bing! Information Design does (as well as having the "Information Design" part.
Just more people trying to get money out of Microsoft without much ground to stand on.
Let's face it. Anywhere you go, you're going to find different names in use no matter what. Chances are, you think of it, it's already in use whether it be on a small store or somewhere else.
The thing is, if you use a name online for a big money making venture and the media hears of it, then there's a good chance that someone who already has this name will try to capitalize on it, then sue if they don't get it.
just another failing no name company trying to get a quick buck
MS Beat them and they are sore losers or just another greedy little company smellin the big money they won't get.
"The company has spent millions just advertising Bing and a name change would be ruinous."
Somehow I doubt this drop in the bucket would be "ruinous."
Bing != "Bing!"
M$ may just renamed it to Bing Search Engine
Maybe someone named "Bing" will also sue M$?
Is it just me or is there a lot more than the usual lawsuits going on?
i.e Lesbian sues Netfix, Hasbro suing Atarai, Microsoft sued, Facebook and FTC...
Bing! and Bing is different
Is it just me or is there a lot more than the usual lawsuits going on? i.e Lesbian sues Netfix, Hasbro suing Atarai, Microsoft sued, Facebook and FTC...
Don't forget intel.
Maybe someone named "Bing" will also sue M$?
I have a friend named Bing and he was annoyed that bing.com was apparently available. He said he'd have had it for his own personal email server if he had known that it was there. He's had that name for more than 9 years, maybe he should do it too?
Man, I need to start a small, useless company with a good name. That way, I can sue a big company! It's kinda like buying up domain names, only with a larger payout
Long before either was around, i new there to be one bing and its still being made and eaten by me. The Twin Bing candy bar. Google it and see for yourself. Better yet use Bing to search for it and watch theem squirm.
If the case would be the opposite, M$ would NEVER let anyone else to ever come near something that could look like something that could be mistaken as theirs.
Poor micro$uxx, and it's wintarded fankiddies... just tasting a bit of it's own medicine.
m$ is famous for suing anything that just remotely resembles any of it's "trademarks".
Well, at least we'll have another bunch of happy lawyers...
Shades of Groucho's letter to Warner Brothers regarding the Marx Brothers movie 'A Night in Casablanca'
Abstract: While preparing to film a movie entitled A Night in Casablanca, the Marx brothers received a letter from Warner Bros. threatening legal action if they did not change the film’s title. Warner Bros. deemed the film’s title too similar to their own Casablanca, released almost five years earlier in 1942, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
Groucho wrote "You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, and even before there had been other brothers — the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”"
see http://www.chillingeffects.org/res [...] ourceID=31
Poor micro$uxx, and it's wintarded fankiddies... just tasting a bit of it's own medicine.m$ is famous for suing anything that just remotely resembles any of it's "trademarks".Well, at least we'll have another bunch of happy lawyers...
And of course Apple didn't sue Woolworths for a logo that looks nothing like the Apple logo a few months back...
micro$uxx commenters are very entertaining to me...you can tell they are pimply faced dorks sitting in their bedroom at parent's house. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's the whole micro$uxx attitude is hillarious along with their opinions on M$.
TBH, it does not matter what companies or products are in question, if I beat you to the patent or the trademarke office by 10 minutes, let alone 24 days, you don't get the right to have whatever it is you are trying to patent or trademark.And if you argue "fair" to me i'll just quote Alexander Grahame Bell, who did *NOT* invent the telephone...
yes he did
This is stupid! You have a name, you patent it IMMEDIATELY. I highly doubt Microsoft had any knowledge of anyone using the name to begin with. I even went to Google just now and typed in "bing -Microsoft -Crosby" (In case you didn't know that means omit pages with the words 'Microsoft' and 'Crosby') and this company still didn't come up on the first couple pages. Are the Germans going to sue Microsoft, too? There's a Bing there as well. This is almost as high up there with the woman that spilled the coffee on herself but didn't know it was so hot.
MS Beat them and they are sore losers or just another greedy little company smellin the big money they won't get.
Judge Leonard Davis, of U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, said Microsoft "unlawfully infringed" on a patent that describes how programs go about "manipulating a document's content and architecture separately."
Result? Microsoft Word Sales Banned In 60 Days
You need to see a lot of reality in this world
in Mexico bing is a ice cram brand
http://www.heladosbing.com.mx/
http://www.franquiciasenmexico.com [...] os/138.jpg
I have a friend named Bing and he was annoyed that bing.com was apparently available. He said he'd have had it for his own personal email server if he had known that it was there. He's had that name for more than 9 years, maybe he should do it too?
Even though I'm sure this is sarcastic, he could have checked at any time if bing.com was available, going back further than 9 years ago and if no one else was using bing.com, he could have registered it himself.
I know a few people who registered two and three letter domain names back in the mid-late 90's, like tm.com, tm.net, mdn.net and so on, then made quite a bit of money off of them down the road when it was near impossible to find 2-3 letter domains available. I just wish I'd have jumped on it. This domain http://www.tm.net is owned by an old friend of mine who runs a local ISP. He was offered $15,000 just to sell it to an interested buyer in 2001. He's made a good bit off of selling e-mail accounts with such a short domain name, though I'm pretty sure he doesn't do it anymore.