jkOnTheRun reports on how Google is now honoring Psion’s trademark of Netbook effectively killing the search term for anyone else. If this pushes further we are likely to see devices currently called netbooks go through a rebranding.
What’s strange about this is that Psion has effectively been a dead company for years and has no active product in the market – even if they did in fact invent one called a netbook though it was discontinued in 2003 – long before the notion of low cost computers we now know as netbooks came around.
Why now? What are they cooking here? There’s no known effort underway that would require Psion to protect the term so their device alone could be marketed that way … and it’s not looking lie a legal battle is mounting to do anything other than stop people from saying netbook.
Sites like netbooknews apparently get 50% of their earned ad revenue from the term netbook and this change is going to sting initially for sure. I’ve been debating removing the sticker on my NC10 which reads Netbook for Mobile Internet but now I might just have to keep it there out of spite.