Month: August 2012

Doing a Thorough Trademark Search: Microsoft Learns the Hard Way

trademark searchMicrosoft recently made an about-face with their planned name “Metro” for the user interface of their upcoming Windows 8 operating system. The Metro moniker had been used in many public settings, such as third-party developer tools and blog posts for some time, but now just weeks before launch, Metro has been replaced with the much less catchy title “Windows 8-Style UI.” It appears that the impetus for the change is the threat of a trademark infringement suit from the German retail chain Metro AG. Apparently someone in Microsoft’s legal department did not do their due diligence when it came to the trademark search for Metro.

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