Open Source Malaise

InfoWorld’s Bill Snyder has a very interesting article about open source “leeching,” and the apparent beginnings of some grumbling in the bleeding-edge world.  I say it’s interesting because of what I perceive to be major fissures in our new freeconomy.  (I didn’t make up the term; it’s been applied to a lot of things…)  In February of last year, before the economy went legs-up, Wired had a cover article called “Free!  Why $0.00 is the Future of Business.”  That didn’t seem like a really cool idea to me at the time, and I still feel that way.  This is because, at some point, I think people want to be rewarded for their information or innovation.

But that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing ethos among certain tech blogs.  Take Gizmodo, for example, which called Psion, who had apparently challenged Intel on the use of mark “netbook” because Psion had registered it with the USPTO long ago, “dickish.”  (Ars Technica has a more even-handed analysis of the litigation. (Ars’ search function is broken right now, so this is the Yahoo! approximation.))  The upshot is pretty clear: free is awesome, and IP is bad.  But how long is that sustainable? (And it bears mentioning that Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, publishes under a Creative Commons License, but it has registered the names of its sites with the USPTO, and even the CCL has restrictions on how its work can be used.)

I think the economics of free are going to be challenging our society for a while, and I can’t end this post without acknowledging the fact that I’m writing this blog on a free wi-fi connection, using a free blog service (WordPress), giving away information for free, and making use of information that I was able to access for free.

Azure Not Registered

A little glee out there in the world, as it appears that Microsoft hadn’t gotten ’round to registering “Azure” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  “According to searches conducted by Computerworld, Microsoft has not applied for a trademark for either ‘Windows Azure’ or ‘Azure Services Platform’ with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.”  There aren’t any details, though, as to how Computerworld did its search.  If it simply went to TESS and entered “Azure” in the search box, it won’t find registrations that were filed after October 16, 2008.  As the USPTO states on its News page:

Last complete paper filing date: 13 Oct, loaded 21 Oct.

Last complete electronic filing date (TEAS): 16 Oct, loaded 22 Oct.

These dates should be used as guides and do not imply that all Trademark applications carrying these filing dates are available in the system as of the load dates. Updates are scheduled to occur Tuesday through Saturday prior to 5:30 AM.

Now, I’m not going to quibble with the notion that Microsoft probably should have already secured trademark registration for Azure before having it hit the market, but I think it speaks to a larger point here: one should not assume that registration does not exist on a mark simply because it isn’t found in TESS.  There is a lag, of about a week or two.