Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Microsoft, Lindows Settle Trademark Lawsuit

Microsoft and San Diego-based Lindows have settled a trademark lawsuit that Microsoft had brought against Lindows. Microsoft is paying Lindows a total of $20M, and provide Lindows a royalty-free license to certain Windows Media Player components. In exchange, Lindows will completely change the name of the company to Linspire, and remove all references to Lindows in its company, software, documentation, terminate all attempts to trademark Lindows, and will hand over all Lindows-based domain names to Microsoft. Microsoft has aggressively been pursuing Lindows in other countries to force the company to stop using the name, but had been stalled out here in the US.