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Lenovo's launch of its Skylight 'Smartbook' has caused something of a stir in Europe, not because it's an awful marketing term, but because it's already trademarked to a German PC maker.
Following the use of the term by V3.co.uk, we received a formal letter from a law firm WILDE.Rechtsanwälte on behalf of Smartbook AG, a German based notebook manufacturer.
This is far from the first time the smartbook term has been used. It was coined by chip maker Qualcomm and is described by Wikipedia as "an upcoming class of mobile devices that combines features of both smartphones and netbooks".
According to the lawyers, Smartbook AG owns the trademark for the term 'smartbook' in Germany, Antigua, Austria, Australia, Benelux, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea, Monaco, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Sweden, Singapore, Turkey and Ukraine - but not the US.
The letter goes on to state that "the use of the trade name 'SMARTBOOK' is not permitted by a third party - decided in court in the case of the company Qualcomm Inc - within the trademark region of our client has been confirmed by the resolution of August 13, 2009 at the District Court Cologne (reference: 31 O 482/09 - still to be legally established)."
This means that Qualcomm knows about the trademark and one would have thought Lenovo, who uses the term to describe the Skylight, should have known about it as well - although both companies are headquartered outside of the regions where it is enforced, so perhaps they feel it does not affect them.
Fortunately we're still allowed to use the smartbook term in stories relating to this case, otherwise this article would be a lot more difficult to write.
07 Jan 2010
