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Intel has joined the legal fight over Psion’s trademark on the term “netbook” with a strongly worded broadside filed in the US District Court in the Northern District of California. Intel purports to decisively refute Psion’s claim to an exclusive right to the term, and demands an immediate judgment canceling the trademark and enjoining Psion from starting trouble again.

Psion trademarked the term in 1996, around the time they began developing the Psion 7, marketed as the netBook, to replace their Psion 5 palmtop. Both devices used ARM processors, ran Psion’s EPOC operating system (the forerunner of Symbian), and were discussed extensively in a recent Ars feature published shortly before the fracas began. There, I pointed out that the netBook “was a netbook in a very real, modern sense, and Psion, appropriately enough, named it exactly that.”

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