Deary me. I was just doing some surfing around Vista and this popped up.
This week IBM completed its acquisition of mainframe tools vendor Isogon.
One of the important parts of the Isogon portfolio is its IT asset management product line called Vista.
DOH!
I think there is every chance IBM will just rename the Vista toolset, and let it go. But what would you do in IBM’s place?
Seems like Vista is a crowded namespace. Who advised Microsoft on this, anyway?
Jaime Cardoso says:
July 29, 2005 at 5:22 pm
“Vista” is also the Portuguese word for “eye”. I think we beat both IBM and Microsoft in the name patent war on accounts of seniority š
Rick Segal says:
August 1, 2005 at 1:35 pm
James,
I did an entry to this great/funny item but the trackback failed a couple of times, sorry..
Peder Ulander says:
August 3, 2005 at 7:30 pm
IBM isn’t the only one that owns this mark … there are 150+ registered or pending marks in the computers and technology category that focus on the “vista” name. My guess … Microsoft realized that they could bury all of the others in long-term litigation costs with what they consider to be a weak mark.
Similar to a comment in your one of your previous blogs, trademarks should not only be there for the protection of large companies with vast teams of lawyers. š
How strong a mark do you think “Windows” is?
Xavier says:
July 16, 2008 at 4:39 pm
That’s a shame, it sounds like something through research could prevent.