Microsoft Wins Long Battle to Protect Windows Software : Computers: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reverses its original ruling that interface was generic.
Microsoft Corp. apparently has succeeded in its long battle to win trademark protection for its widely used Windows operating software for personal computers, a federal official said Monday.
The ruling has raised some eyebrows because the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office originally refused the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s 1990 application, ruling that Windows was a “generic” description of a graphics interface.
But over the years, in a pattern familiar to observers of the world’s largest software company, a team of persistent and well-financed Microsoft attorneys assembled enough evidence to persuade the federal agency to reverse its decision.
Esther Belenker, a senior trademark attorney at the Patent and Trademark Office, said that although Microsoft’s application originally was weak, over the years “the issues appeared to change.”
“They collected affidavits from numerous officials of other software companies. They had a survey conducted. . . . They showed that this mark is everywhere,” she said.
Terms such as window and windowing have long been used in the industry to refer to a system of navigating among files and programs such as the one pioneered by Apple Computer Inc. with its Macintosh personal computer line.
But Microsoft, which launched its breakthrough Windows 3.0 software in May, 1990, conducted an aggressive program to get other companies to license the Windows name from Microsoft at minimal cost, largely to cement its trademark claim.
In addition, Microsoft acquired the rights to several little-known computer programs that already had trademark rights to the Windows name, including Windows for Data, Dynamic Windows and Polestar Windows.
Finally, Microsoft’s application to have the name Windows added to the principal register of U.S. trademarks was approved and published in the office’s official gazette June 21.
The office has also approved Microsoft’s request to register the name Windows NT, the “flying Windows” logo and other marks associated with the Windows system, which is used on more than 50 million PCs around the world.
The rulings are subject to appeal and could be challenged for up to five years after they become final, but so far no challenges have been filed.
Industry analysts said Microsoft gains little financially by protecting the Windows name but that it does improve its ability to control Windows-related products. “They have a little more control over the quality of how it gets used,” said Steve McClellan of Merrill Lynch.
