Sure Google’s Chrome May Be A Threat to MS But Is There Already A TM Case?
posted by Deven Desai
So I saw the new Google Chrome logo and instantly thought it looks similar to MS’s Windows Media button. Then I thought no, it is a favorite game from childhood: Simon. Apparently I am not the only one who has these thoughts. John Paczkowski wrote his take on the browser and also does a side by side comparison of Google’s logo and the memory game. Hey! Maybe Google was trying to say that you don’t need memory after all! Yes, that’s it! Google IS YOUR MIND! Faster. Better. Stronger. Just not embedded in your brain…yet.
I am not, repeat not, saying that MS (or Milton Bradley) has a claim or should file lawsuits. Still look at the images. They are awfully close. As Harry McCracken of Technologizer notes the Chrome logo reminds him of MS Windows’s logo.
For me it is more of a Windows Media Player Logo.
Of course primary colors and circles seem like they are open season. Then again, who used them to signify software or technology products first? McCracken offers:
No, the Chrome and Windows Vista logos are not true twins, but they’re both round and shiny, with the same color scheme–red, green, yellow, and blue. (Okay, looking at the Vista logo, that’s more of an orange than a red, but close enough.) If you’d told me that the Chrome logo was what Microsoft had come up with for Windows Seven, I’d have believed you.
Still as he points out, the colors in the Chrome logo are in Google’s word mark. Nonetheless, as he and everyone knows Google wants to take over for MS.
There may be a case in all these images. Still as Sandy Rierson and I argue in Confronting The Genericism Conundrum, context should matter much more in trademark cases in part because linguistics shows that people can indeed hold more than one related idea in their head. Rebecca Tushnet’s Gone in 60 Milliseconds: Trademark Law and Cognitive Science takes the point further and shows that “the cognitive theory of dilution is internally consistent and appeals to the authority of science, [but] it does not rest on sufficient empirical evidence to justify its adoption.”
As always, draw your own conclusions.
September 3, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Posted in: Intellectual Property
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Responses (4)
James Grimmelmann - September 3, 2008 at 1:49 pm
No, no, it’s a Pokemon ball.
David Schraub - September 3, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I’m more getting a “343 Guilty Spark” vibe from Halo. Or possible GLaDOS from Portal. Both of which are creeping me out.
Deven - September 3, 2008 at 2:04 pm
So I read a pokemon reference too. Throw in David’s comment and it looks like Google is indeed everything to everyone forever. DOWN WITH THE GOOGLE! or not. Maybe I will search for an answer on wiki. I hear it works for the government rather well. Oh no that went the other way. Back to Google for me.
Logical Extremes - September 3, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I thought it looked like a combination of a pokeball and a hacky-sack I have at home…
http://beta.friendfeed.com/e/e04a0f83-42fc-45f9-b3b7-fb98caf924c2/Pokeball-Hacky-Sack-Google-Chrome/
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