Lindows Suit Resolved

Lindows, a company that sells a consumer-oriented Linux-based OS, and Microsoft have ended a three-year copyright infringement battle. Among other provisions of the deal, Lindows will change its name to Linspire and acknowledge that “windows” is not a generic term for OSs, while Microsoft will pay US$20 million-nearly ten times the small company’s 2003 revenue.

Incentives to Settle

The companies’ legal tussle began in Dec. 2001, when Microsoft sued Lindows for trademark infringement, alleging that the word “Lindows” was too close to “Windows” and might confuse consumers. Before the case reached trial, however, a judge in the United States ruled that a jury should consider whether Microsoft had the right to trademark “Windows” in the first place, and an appeals court agreed. This ruling placed Microsoft’s most valuable brand at risk.

Meanwhile, several European judges sided with Microsoft and granted preliminary injunctions preventing Lindows from doing business in Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands unless the company changed its name. Microsoft was seeking similar injunctions in Canada and France.