Will Android force a copyright rethink?

With both Google and a developer from Illinois called Erich Specht claiming to own the brand, it is high time that we all started looking at more innovative ways of managing copyrighted names

Will Android force a copyright rethink?

With both Google and a developer from Illinois called Erich Specht claiming to own the brand, it is high time that we all started looking at more innovative ways of managing copyrighted names

It is always good to be wanted, as long it is not the police doing the wanting. Similarly, it is always nice to follow a court case as long as you do not have anything at stake, or are not at the receiving end of the law.
But this said, there are times where a lot of problems are bound to be caused merely because of a name. And the same is happening now, with a tussle over the name Android, which one associates with Google's Linux avatar for mobiles.

Name problems

A little history will make the issue clearer. According to the site www.theregister.co.uk, Erich Specht, a software developer and internet applications service provider, was granted a trademark in October 2002 by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for Android Data. Google applied for a trademark for Android much later, in October 2007.

However, since the USPTO had granted the trademark to Specht, it denied Google's claim in February 2008.
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While the USPTO says that there could be some confusion between Google's and Specht's Android, Google feels that Android Data hadn't been used for over three years and so there couldn't be any confusion.

Making a case

If Google had heeded the USPTO's call and changed the name, this would have been the end of the story, and I would have been writing about something else today. However, Google stuck to its guns and the Android name.
None deterred, Specht has filed a case against Google and 47 other companies for trademark infringement.

One doesn't know what will happen, but one hopes that the court rules that 'Android' cannot be copyrighted because it is a standard word in English today and was first mentioned by St. Albertus Magnus in 1270.

Whose fault?

It is hard to blame either Google or Specht. From one point of view, Specht is the nice guy who is being trampled by the might of Google. From another angle, Specht is the evil guy who couldn't make his company popular and is merely raking up the issue to get money out of Google.

Which version is true? Nobody knows. Nobody cares. All we users want are solutions, not court cases.

QUICK TAKE
>>A person called Erich Specht says he owns Android
>>He has filed a case against Google
>>This could affect the growth of Android

The famous Pentium case
When Intel in 1993 launched a new chip and called it the Pentium instead of naming it the 586, people joked about it and asked if the next version would be called the Sexium. The reason why Intel chose Pentium was because of a court order, which disallowed Intel from claiming a trademark on numbers like 286, 386 and 486. Intel, which wanted to call the chip the 586, called it Pentium after the Greek work 'Penta', which means five. If the courts in the US apply the same logic then they may say that, just as one cannot copyright a number, it is not possible to copyright an existing word like 'android'.