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Microsoft on Thursday filed a trademark infringement complaint against San Diego-based Lindows.com, which is currently developing an operating system designed to compete with Microsoft's Windows.

Microsoft, which has approximately 384 million users of its operating system, filed the motion against Lindows.com in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, claiming that users could be confused by the similarities between the two operating systems.

Lindows.com expects to have its first product released early next year.

"We are not asking the court to stop the production of this product. We are simply saying that they shouldn't use a name that confuses the public," Microsoft spokesperson Jon Murchinson says. "We would prefer to work with them to resolve this problem voluntarily."

Lindows.com plans to launch the first version of its operating system next year. LindowsOS will allow users to run applications written for both Windows and the open-source Linux operating system.

"If [Microsoft is] saying that people will confuse LindowsOS with Windows XP, I think there are zero people in the world that would make that mistake," says Michael Robertson, founder and chief executive officer of Lindows.com.

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