Murdoch's BSkyB stares down Microsoft: Redmond renames SkyDrive to OneDrive After six months of deliberation, Microsoft has announced the new name for its trademark-disputed SkyDrive cloud storage service: OneDrive. The SkyDrive brand, which has been a cornerstone of Microsoft's latest Windows marketing, was called into dispute in 2011 when British Sky Broadcasting Group – the European satellite …
At least Microsoft *gave* it a new name this time
It could start to get really confusing if, each time they lose a branding case, the feature/service in question went without a name from then on.
Mind you, having no name is probably not a lot more confusing from calling two different products exactly the same thing (Outlook, I'm looking at you)
I was trying to help someone with a "Can't send draft email" issue in Outlook and frankly I was confused "there is no send button". "What program are you in? what does it say at the top of the screen?" - Outlook, OK Outlook, scratches head, "and you have the mail open, you double clicked the draft email but there is no send button..."
Madness, don't call some re-branded online web service Outlook! people don't assimilate the .com extension so break the work OnOutlook, WebOutlook. I'm driving more towards Thunderbird now at least I know where the buttons are.
(just in case anyone actually gets this he was on the web version of "Outlook" and needed to hit 'Continue Writing')
Yes because OneDrive sounds so similar Ubuntu One it's easy to get the two mixed up, maybe I'll see if my 2 year old kid gets it mixed up, if not then you will clearly know your levels of comprehension.
C'mon, make up your fucking minds people, do you want silly pointless lawsuits or not....it sounds different, get over it.
Rabid Linux down voting expected.
This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft co-incidentally named something confusingly similar to a rival service - Office Open XML not to be confused with Open Office XML ..
Ubuntu One personal cloud, not to be confused with OneDrive ..
The problem with Microsoft is that they're not seeing any word-of-mouth success these days. The public aren't bothered about their offerings, instead plumping for solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive.
And they're what we use as a business to share files with our customers. Not Skydrive/OneDrive whatever.
Is it time for another Outlook rebrand yet? Just what is Outlook web edition called these days?
- Microsoft Hosted Exchange
- Outlook 365
- Outlook Web Access
PS. Has anyone ever tried to login to Outlook (exchange) online and had their credentials rejected? And then realised you're trying to login to the public portal, which is also called Outlook, and looks pretty much the same?
MS = Messy & Confused
Absolutely. Have an upvote Sir!
Mrs Bert1 - Outlook exchange account with work.
Me - Outlook (hotmail) account (Not may main account, I hasten to add - but I log in occasionally)
No obvious way to switch between them, and no cue as to which you are on.
It's a complete pain in the mailbox.
It's not truly a Microsoft product until it's gone through a name change. I wonder if they'll rebrand it again when the Xbox One 2 comes out?
Microsofts branding and product portfolio has always been all over the place, but they seem to be getting worse. Google were quite bad at that for a while too, but they seem to have sorted themselves out even if some of the decisions to do that have been controversial.
I originally signed up for a Windows Live email account through their website hotmail.com and a good few months back I had an option to migrate my address to @Outlook.com instead. I figured I'd go for the Outlook address as I preferred it to the live address, so clicked the link to migrate my mailbox across. It isn't an important account just a throwaway MS account that I use for MSDN / Xbox live. I signed into MSDN and Xbox live no problem with my new @outlook.com address, so everything was great or so I thought. My partner recently tried to email me at the outlook.com address and it turns out that it isn't a valid email address and messages just get bounced back... The live.com address still works though, but outlook.com lets me sign into xbox and MSDN? All very bizarre
Just how dense do you need to be to possibly confuse SkyDrive with BSkyB? Add to this that most (and by that 99%), of 'Merikans probably never heard of Sky to begin with, and I just don't see a case here. OTOH: Though Mr Murdock does own DirectTV over there... So why hasn't he thrown a tissy-fit over MicroSoft's missuse of the term DirectX yet? The "X" kinda implies a some Variable I'd find this to be way more confusing then Sky.
Then again, MicroSoft should do the sensible thing, and rechristen SkyDrive, as CandyDrive....
I'm not sure what the Americans have to do with it given that the legal case was all in the UK, it was up to Microsoft whether they just re-branded in the UK or worldwide (or indeed just remove the service from sale in the UK).
Given 'Sky' is the trading name of BSkyB and is the way all there advertising and customers refers to there TV service, Sky Broadband' is the name of the ISP service, and 'Sky Go' is the name for there web TV service, it is understandable that people would assume 'Sky Drive' would be the name of their online storage solution and doesn't seem dense at all. I imagine that 90% of the customers would take a while to remember that BSkyB is the actually company name.
As to your question regarding DirectTV, my guess is they don't own trademarks relating to general PC software, the markets aren't the same so any confusion doesn't matter and most importantly the general name people know DirectTV as is DirectTV and not 'Direct', BSkyB on the other hand has trademarks in providing Web based services, could sensibly launch an online storage solution (and may well in the future if they want to allow people to watch their recordings anywhere) and most importantly are generally known as 'Sky' by the general public.
Just because BSkyB is a wealthy corporation, I don't accept this argument that they are entitled to take a common and ancient word like 'sky' and appropriate it.
Sky TV as a service fair enough but for a wider branding they should be required to choose something distinctive if they want it protected (e.g. a made up word like Microsoft), not an everyday word. Just as I can accept the Microsoft use of Windows as a name for an operating system but would be annoyed if they attempted to expand the scope of their claim into use of the word window elsewhere.
> I don't accept this argument that they are entitled to take a common and ancient word like 'sky' and appropriate it.
But they have done no such thing. You can use the word "Sky" to your heart's content without their permission. Authors can use it in books -- hey, they can even use it in titles. The producers of the film "Skyfall" were not sued, obviously.
Furthermore, being a wealthy company has nothing to do with it. You can take out a trademark, if you like. Takes some time and some legal fees, but not massive wealth and you don't need to be a company. A student at my university took out a trademark on "21st Century Fox". (True story. Made lots of money.)
All trademark law does is prevent confusion among customers. And customers were confused: Sky customer service were getting calls from customers asking about Skydrive. Remember, most people don't set up their own PCs and routers and so on. People are given a PC with a Sky broadband connection, a Sky Go service, and a Skydrive on it. Conflating them is hardly a stupid mistake.
And there's no point viewing Microsoft as victims in this just 'cause they lost the case. Trademarks work both ways: Microsoft have been prevented from being associated with BSkyB's next major fuck-up.
If you want to see a really good example of how all this works, look up the history of the Apple vs Apple case, another common everyday word that's a trademark. Neither company owns the word "Apple", only its commercial use in certain clearly defined contexts.
Microsoft made up a word skydrive and their hearts are not content. That Skyfall wasn't taken to court as well says nothing in itself. Malicious use of trademark law to blackmail a company and make lot of money is hardly an advert for how the trademark system is working.
If Sky are confusing their customers by using a common English word to describe their services they should use more distinctive language for their product names - easy. If I make a product titled Skybox Editor to edit backgrounds for video games (where skybox is an established technical term) by your reasoning PC users with Sky broadband could get it confused with BSkyB products or services so Sky would be entitled to sue me.
My point was if you trademark a common word, a reasonable person would not expect the trademark to be relevant except in a narrow context. The court seems to have stretched this notion beyond reasonable and I don't quite understand why you think this is a good thing.
> If Sky are confusing their customers by using a common English word to describe their services ...
But they're not. Sky customers do not confuse BSkyB's services with the actual sky, do not confuse them with Skyholidays.com, did not confuse them with the films "Skyfall" or "Vanilla Sky", and don't confuse them with records released by Skye Edwards. iPad owners are not confused about whether their devices were manufactured by actual edible fruit. People don't accidentally book river cruises down Katie Price. The confusion you are referring to does not exist: people are perfectly capable of distinguishing between nouns and proper nouns and trademarks. Where confusion can occur, and can cost people money, is between competing trademarks in the same context, which is why there's an arbitration process to sort such matters out.
> Microsoft made up a word skydrive and their hearts are not content.
Microsoft picked a brand name that was OK in the US but not in the UK. They then faced the choice of rebranding in the UK only or worldwide, and chose to do so worldwide. This is such a common ordinary event for companies that trade in multiple jurisdictions that I doubt they give much of a damn, to be honest.
> a reasonable person would not expect the trademark to be relevant except in a narrow context. The court seems to have stretched this notion beyond reasonable
A lot of BSkyB's business revolves around allowing their users to access files from the cloud. They don't allow uploads, yet. Seems like a very minor difference to me.
> If I make a product titled Skybox Editor to edit backgrounds for video games (where skybox is an established technical term) by your reasoning PC users with Sky broadband could get it confused with BSkyB products or services so Sky would be entitled to sue me.
No, by my reasoning it all depends on the context of the use. Sounds like a very interesting case.
"Just because BSkyB is a wealthy corporation, I don't accept this argument that they are entitled to take a common and ancient word like 'sky' and appropriate it."
Microsoft did exactly the same thing when Lindows came out, doesn't make it right for either megacorp and the confusion part of trademark law should be scrapped with extreme prejudice.
"Just because BSkyB is a wealthy corporation, I don't accept this argument that they are entitled to take a common and ancient word like 'sky' and appropriate it."
When I first heard of MS Skydrive product I had a feeling I'd heard the name before. I may well be wrong but my first thought was that it was the brand name for a future (at the time) Sky PVR. Even if I am wrong, I think Sky will be missing a trick if they don't re-brand their current PVR (or the next iteration) Skydrive(tm)
The answer is not very dense.
Microsoft came out with SkyDrive at roughly the same time as bSkyb (better known as Sky) got into the ISP business with their Sky Broadband.
I know my first experience of SkyDrive was when a Sky Broadband customer used it to send some files to me (natural assumption was sky email address + file storage system with sky in the name = probably the same company)
> I know my first experience of SkyDrive was when a Sky Broadband customer used it to send some files to me (natural assumption was sky email address + file storage system with sky in the name = probably the same company)
The question is, given the real intent of trademarks, did this harm you in anyway, or did this make you purchase Microsofts SkyDrive solution over the SkyDrive solution offered by BSkyB?
If you were looking into what this "SkyDrive" was in order to purchase, would you not immediately realise that this was a Microsoft offering, and that BSkyB itself didn't have a "SkyDrive" offering?
Even if BSkyB did have a competing "SkyDrive", surely you would have also come to this realisation after 5 minutes of googling to discover where to buy?
> The question is, given the real intent of trademarks, did this harm you in anyway, or did this make you purchase Microsofts SkyDrive solution over the SkyDrive solution offered by BSkyB?
That's not the real intent of trademarks -- or not all of it. Yes, BSkyB would suffer if you bought Microsoft's product instead of theirs by mistake. However, BSkyB's business also suffers when they have to field loads of phonecalls from Microsoft's mistaken customers, as answering those calls cost money. Since people's time is valuable, those unnecessary calls are also costly to the people making them.
Furthermore, BSkyB are actually obliged to pursue this sort of case to prevent trademark dilution. If a software firm were to launch a broadband or TV product in the future and call it "Sky", they would be able to use the fact that BSkyB had not challenged Microsoft's use of "Skydrive" as a defence in court. It is part of your legal responsibility as a trademark holder to actively protect it; if you don't, you lose it. So that's another way BSkyB would have suffered by not bringing this case.
Now, I enjoy seeing Microsoft taking a bruising as much as the next man, but world governments are increasingly getting away from the real purpose behind trademarks and someone has to call stop on this shenanigans.
Trademarks were not intended as "intellectual property", but as protections for the consumer. So that the consumer does not become confused as to which company is offering the genuine product, and which may be offering an inferior rip-off.
Why are words such as "Word", "Sky" and "One" allowed to be trademarked at all? The trademark should mean exactly what it says: "trade mark".
Microsoft trades under "Microsoft", BSkyB trades under "BSkyB". These "trade marks" should be sufficient and allow Microsoft to offer a "Microsoft SkyDrive" and BSkyB to offer a "BSkyB SkyDrive".
It should be sufficient for customers to distinguish between trading Companies (e.g. Microsoft, BSkyB, Marks & Spencers, Tesco, Hoover, Dyson, etc...) and determine that a product offered by one differs from a product offered by another (after all many people are brand aware and many tend to gravitate towards brands - that's where we get 'brand loyalty' from).
Restrict "trade marks" to the trading name, not derivative products, and there'll be a lot less of this nonsense.
So, in your world, each company would be allowed just one trademark? Every car manufacturer in the world could make something called a Mondeo or a Clio. There would be no iPhone or iPad or iPod or iMac, just Apple computer A, Apple phone B, etc. There would be no way to distinguish between Coca-Cola, Malvern Water, and Odwalla food bars, as they're all made by the same company. And I could make any old shit in my shed and call it Imigran and sell it to Migraine sufferers, before selling loads of crappy music under the name U2. Have you thought this through?
Trademark law is actually quite reasonable most of the time. I for one would like to see its use-it-or-lose-it aspects extended to copyright law.
We already live in a world where manufacturers produce similar products sharing the same pseudonyms - "x cloud", "smart x", "sonic x". The product name is simply a differentiator to separate versions (e.g. Gutsy Gibbon, Masterbating Monkey) or sell you something slightly different yet sounding similar in order entice different market segments (e.g. Galaxy S3, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S2 Mini etc...).
The market already works to identity fakes and God knows that despite all the patent battles, an Apple fanboi has more chance of mistaking an iPhone 5 for an iPhone 5S than an iPhone and a Samsung. If patents protect design, why should trademarks protect individual instances of products?
Therefore, if Samsung were allowed to use "iPhone" for a new smartphone (that didn't look like an Apple iPhone) then would that stop people from buying Apples iPhones? Perhaps some people, but guaranteed, most of the people and the press would rip on Samsung for doing it. It would be seen as not original, and probably cause more damage to Samsung in the long run (cheapening their brand to a rip off). Better for Samsung if they create their own brand (e.g. Galaxy).
People will gravitate to manufacture and quality. If someone came up with a better smartphone then Apple and decided to call it an "iPhone", then perhaps it deserves the moniker. However, if it turned out to be rubbish, then people would call it a cheap ripoff and avoid it, regardless of whether it's legal or not.
This is already how the world works! I mean look at the terms "cloud", "smart tv", "flash drive/dongle" and "big data" - they're marketing terms, not functional, they may as well be trademarked and belong to one company as well.
If a company can claim trademark on "Sky" what's to stop anyone forming a company called BCloudB and claiming trademark on "Cloud"?
> Therefore, if Samsung were allowed to use "iPhone" for a new smartphone ...
Why Samsung? They've established their own brand. A better example would be, say, me and a couple of friends making utterly shit phones and selling them on Ebay under the name "iPhone". In your world, the ripped-off customers would have no protection from us and no legal grounds for complaint. You're insane.
> if it turned out to be rubbish, then people would call it a cheap ripoff and avoid it
How would they avoid it? I'm faced with twenty completely identical boxes, each saying "iPhone" on it. (The boxes would be identical in your world, since the distinctive features of packaging design that enable companies to differentiate their products are trademarks.) Each is roughly the same price. Some are good, some are shit. How do I avoid the shit ones? You have no idea; you just claim that this would happen.
> People will gravitate to manufacture and quality.
No, a few people gravitate to quality, which establishes reputation, then everyone else gravitates to reputation. This is precisely why trademarks are valuable and useful.
> If a company can claim trademark on "Sky" what's to stop anyone forming a company called BCloudB and claiming trademark on "Cloud"?
Nothing, but they wouldn't be able to use the trademark to overrule prior use, so everyone who was already selling things called "cloud" would be allowed to continue doing so. If your surname is McDonald, you can start a burger bar called "McDonald's" but you can't use the golden arches or make adverts with Hamburglar in them -- which is of course precisely why companies have more than one trademark. Like I said, trademark law is pretty reasonable.
OK let's try again, I'm not abolishing trademarks - I'm saying restrict it to company names only!
> A better example would be, say, me and a couple of friends making utterly shit phones and selling them on Ebay under the name "iPhone".
I'm not saying make it legal to create fakes. I'm saying you would have to market your product as "Me and My Mates(TM) iPhone" and Apple would have their "Apple(TM) iPhone" therefore a customer would still be informed and offered consumer protections against you selling an "Apple iPhone" which was your own knock-off.
> You're insane.
Well that escalated quickly... so imagining a different world or proposing changes to law is insanity is it?
What's the term for someone such as yourself, who blindly purchases products based solely on the product name without any investigation into their function or cost?
> The boxes would be identical in your world, since the distinctive features of packaging design that enable companies to differentiate their products are trademarks.
No they're not, they're designs and protected by design patents. I actually mentioned design patents above if you had taken the time to slow down and read my comment rather than rage.
So back to my example above - you are selling a box with "Me and My Mates iPhone" and apple are selling a box with "Apple iPhone". The shitness speaks for itself and the market will dictate which is better in the long run.
> No, a few people gravitate to quality, which establishes reputation, then everyone else gravitates to reputation. This is precisely why trademarks are valuable and useful.
So, in "my world", people will gravitate to Apple(TM) and avoid "Me and My Mates(TM)" - your shitty company that makes inferior iPhones.
> If your surname is McDonald, you can start a burger bar called "McDonald's" but you can't use the golden arches or make adverts with Hamburglar in them -- which is of course precisely why companies have more than one trademark. Like I said, trademark law is pretty reasonable.
Finally, a valid rebuke to my argument - however this doesn't actually seem to stop companies like Apple, The Olympics Committee and Hollywood (to name a few examples) from suing smaller established companies using the same names or symbols for valid purposes you mention - and not even in the same industries or markets.
Of course you may agree with the actions of Apple, The Olympics, Hollywood and similar actions taken by others, which means we will never see eye to eye. However I think allowing this abundance of trademarking only causes more confusion and lawsuits than solves it.
So my response is as follows; that in a world where McDonald's were limited solely to the trademark of their own name, either they would have to come up with a more unique name, or simply tie it to the location of their head office (should sort out the offshore tax loophole issues at the same time).
Let's face you've almost made my point for me. McDonald IS a name. Many people ARE named McDonald. We don't need to enforce unique names on people and we seem to manage fine in differentiating them based on other factors which can still be considered generic amongst the populace.
If you respond to this, before you vent (and hurl more insults) please consider I AM FOR TRADEMARKS, just arguing against trademarks on product lines.
> Trademark law is actually quite reasonable most of the time. I for one would like to see its use-it-or-lose-it aspects extended to copyright law.
I understand in the US that if a trademark becomes a verb in the common vernacular that it's no longer enforceable. In Europe, this is not the case - so they are much like copyrights.
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