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Is the Xbox Really Microsoft's?

Microsoft faces a legal challenge for the brand name of its upcoming game console.

Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

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Microsoft could face a legal challenge to its use of the Xbox name for its forthcoming video game console. Microsoft filed its claim to the name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on October 18, 1999, but a Florida company registered its use of the Xbox mark seven months earlier, on March 10, 1999.

"We are in the e-learning space, the software industry, and it's very confusing to have two companies in the same space with the same name," says Xbox Technologies Chair and Chief Executive Officer John van Leeuwen.

Since filing its first claim to the name in October 1999, Microsoft has filed a further nine claims, the most recent on September 19, 2000.

Meanwhile, Xbox Technologies and various of its subsidiaries have filed a further 45 claims to the name, 38 of them in May 2000. One filing relates to "Providing information in the fields of entertainment, hospitality, travel, music or movies or sports over global computer networks, global communication networks, wireless devices, telephones, and desktop computers." Twenty-two of them are for variations on the name, including "Xbox Technologies" and "Xbox E-solutions."

The company trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol XBOXE.

Negotiating for the Name

"We have no interest in coexisting. It's confusing," van Leeuwen says.

Microsoft and Xbox are in negotiation over the name, and an agreement could be reached within a few months. "There's some pressure to get it done from their end," he says.

"Microsoft is spending a lot of money promoting it and I think it (the Xbox name) is as valuable to them as it is to us. If they want us to part with it, it's up to them to determine how much they think it's worth," van Leeuwen says.

Microsoft introduced its Xbox game console a year ago, and showed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. It is scheduled to ship this year.

Microsoft representatives did not immediately return calls for comment.

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