Microsoft v. Lindows.com, Inc. was a court case brought by Microsoft against Lindows, Inc in December 2001, claiming that the name "Lindows" was a violation of its trademark "Windows."
After two and a half years of court battles, Microsoft paid US$20 million for the Lindows trademark, and Lindows Inc. became Linspire Inc.
The case
In addition to the United States, Microsoft also sued Lindows in Sweden, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Canada.
Lindows started off with a handicap of having to defend themselves from their own lawyers (from St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company) who initially refused to defend Lindows. Judge Robert Takasugi found St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company had breached their contract.In response to these lawsuits, Lindows launched ChoicePC.com, which allowed people to purchase lifetime Lindows memberships that included a copy of LindowsOS, LindowsOS upgrades for life, and a ChoicePC.com T-shirt, for US$100. All money from the memberships went towards helping Lindows in its legal battle against Microsoft.
Lindows...
David
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.