Intel, Psion calling truce on "netbook" lawsuit?
updated 02:30 pm EDT, Fri May 29, 2009
Intel Psion May Call Truce
Intel and Psion are said today to have reached a settlement in their mutual lawsuits over the use of the term "netbook." The latter company is reported by BlogEEE as having agreed to drop its claims to the word and would let Dell and other PC makers use the word to describe their PCs without demanding royalties or threatening lawsuits. What, if anything, Intel would offer in compensation hasn't been detailed.
The agreement is described as not yet public and hasn't yet been confirmed by either of the involved companies. A final agreement is expected to help the PC category, however, as many companies have recently been pressed into describing the systems as "mini notebooks" or other similar terms despite "netbook" having entered common usage.
Psion originally manufactured the NetBook and later NetBook Pro as mini portables organized around typical online office tasks but stopped publicly selling its last models in 2003; it has rejected claims of an obsolete trademark by insisting that it continues to sell the NetBook Pro in small numbers directly to businesses.
