Pilot Pen: Please stop calling PDAs Pilots
Posted by Matthew on Monday October 28, 2002 @11:38AM
from the we-invented-this-word dept.
Matthew writes: Pilot Pen company, owner of the trademark term “Pilot” for anything that is long, reasonably straight, and pointed at one end, has appealed to consumers to please stop referring to all PDA devices as “Pilots”.
“We asserted our trademark rights to any product that included anything long, reasonably straight, and pointed at one end when we threatened to sue USRobotics to force them to change the name of the Palm Pilot to the Palm Device.” said a company spokesman. “At that time, there were 1/10th as many palm users as there are now.”
“But for some reason, consumers latched onto the term Pilot to refer to any handheld device. Even PocketPC users call their devices Pilots. It’s damning. They haven’t been sold as Pilots for over five years now, but we’re in danger of loosing our trademark rights to anything long, reasonably straight, and pointed at one end due to common usage. We don’t want to wind up like Band-Aid, Jello, or PC.”
The spokesman did not answer questions about how something flat, reasonably square, and not pointed at one end could have infringed their rights originally.