Microsoft vs. Lindows

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Microsoft v. Lindows.com, Inc. was a court case brought by Microsoft against Lindows, Inc, claiming that the name "Lindows" was a violation of its trademark "Windows."

In addition to the United States, Microsoft has also sued Lindows in Sweden, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Canada. Michael Robertson has called this situation "Sextuple Jeopardy", an extension of the term double jeopardy.

In response to these lawsuits, Lindows had launched ChoicePC.com [1], which allows people to purchase lifetime Lindows memberships that includes a free copy of LindowsOS, free LindowsOS upgrades for life, and a ChoicePC.com t-shirt, for $100 USD. All money from the memberships goes towards helping Lindows in its legal battle against Microsoft.

Lindows had also retaliated against Microsoft's lawsuits with using Lin---s (pronounced Lindash) and the corresponding domain lind---s.com (now disused). Consumers and resellers from countries in which Microsoft has blocked the sale of Lindows products due to the trademark lawsuits were encouraged to visit the Lin---s website instead of Lindows.com to purchase the Lin---s software, which is identical to Lindows except for the name change.

As early as 2002, a court rejected Microsoft's claims, stating that Microsoft had used the term "windows" to describe graphical user interfaces before the product, Windows, was ever released, and that the windowing technique had already been implemented by Xerox and Apple many years before^[1]. Microsoft kept seeking retrial, but in February 2004, a judge rejected two of Microsoft's central claims^[2]. The judge denied Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction and raised "serious questions" about Microsoft's trademark. Microsoft feared that a court may define "Windows" as generic and result in the loss of its status as a trademark. In July 2004, Microsoft offered to settle with Lindows.^[3] As part of this licensing settlement, Microsoft paid an estimated $24 million cash (for a case that Microsoft itself brought), and Lindows transferred the Lindows trademark to Microsoft and changed their name to Linspire.

Many analysts concluded that Microsoft appeared to have been unwise in choosing generic names for many of its products, such as Office for an office productivity suite, Pocket PC for software for a pocket-sized computer, and Project for project scheduling software.