Psion Promises Not To Sue Harmless Blogs, But What Will They Do Once They've Gained Our Trust...

Posted by Daniel Shain

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A few days ago, Psion sent out cease and desist letters to a number of sites over use of their registered trademark, "Netbook". Predictably, this caused an uproar of fury and snide remarks about the size of Psion's... market share... but they have since responded with promises of fairness.

jkOnTheRun was one of the first sites to bring up the C&D letters, and successfully entered into a dialogue with Origin, which is Psion's legal counsel. In two letters they received, Psion first promised they were only targeting marketing websites which make a profit from the term, and that a mere 5% of the letters were sent to blog sites which contained advertising using the forbidden word. When jk pointed out that most blogs feature ads which are context sensitive and out of their control, Psion sent the second letter which said they agreed they should target advertising retailers instead of the blogs, so would any blogs that got a letter over contextual advertising please just let them know?

We read the letters, and we'll be honest, the guy sounds decent. It doesn't sound like a ploy based on their stated goals, it only seems like it has to be because of their highly profitable timing. Whether the lawyer is a friendly guy seeking proper justice or just an excellent publicist (we'd bet on the latter), the fact is the timing is suspicious and the word has had time to become pretty generic. Psion must know it's not going to get much out of angering hundreds of technology blogs, so we'll see what happens when they start attacking the big boys like Intel.

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