AllThingsD » G.ho.st

"No Walls" Trademark Dispute (Maybe Microsoft Should Bring Back Seinfeld)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:28:23 +0000

An unusual Israeli-Palestinian joint venture start-up, which makes a cloud-based Web operating system letting users access their desktops from any computer with an Internet connection, is alleging a trademark violation by Microsoft in its new $300 million advertising campaign.

G.ho.st, which stands for “Global Hosted Operating System,” is claiming it has a pending trademark registration for the tagline “no walls.”

G.ho.st has used the phrase for almost 18 months and is alleging that it pertains specifically to operating systems (as shown in the screenshot here).

In a letter sent earlier this week to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and many others, which BoomTown has obtained, G.ho.st CEO Zvi Schreiber claims that the software giant has violated G.ho.st’s pending trademark for the ad phrase “no walls” and asks Microsoft (MSFT) to remove it from the company’s marketing materials.

Microsoft’s advertising campaign, which launched this month and had a rocky start with poorly received commercials featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, uses the taglines “Imagine No Walls” and “Life Without Walls” to tout its Vista operating system. (See a screenshot of one example below; click on it to make it larger.)

G.ho.st, which is hosted by Amazon (AMZN), is yet another of many attempts to make cloud computing real and is competing to grab customers from the software-based Windows powerhouse.

A Microsoft spokesman, in an email to me, dismissed G.ho.st’s claims.

He said:

“We are aware of their concerns and believe their claims have no merit. We are not aware that Ghost has any trademark registrations or other rights that would be infringed by our ‘Life Without Walls’ campaign. To our knowledge, the right they have asserted, namely, a U.S. ‘registered trademark application,’ in the phrase ‘No Walls,’ does not exist.

“To our knowledge, Ghost has no trademark registrations or other rights in the phrase ‘No Walls.’ Even if they did, they cannot prevent others from using the words ‘no walls’ together in a sentence or in a descriptive manner in ad copy. Nor can they claim ownership in word ‘wall’ or the idea of a wall. The tagline for Microsoft’s new ad campaign is ‘Life Without Walls’–a slogan that, taken in its entirety, is not confusingly similar to Ghost’s purported ‘motto.’”

G.ho.st launched at our D: All Things Digital conference this past May (where Ballmer and Gates also appeared).

Here are two videos showing the start-up’s whole demo:

And here’s G.ho.st CEO Zvi Schreiber’s full email letter to Ballmer (with email addresses and other personal information redacted):

From: “Zvi Schreiber (G.ho.st)”
To: [Steve Ballmer]
Cc: [redacted]
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:15:41 AM (GMT+0200) Auto-Detected
Subject: G.ho.st Virtual Computer NO WALLS trademark

September 23, 2008

Steve

G.ho.st (pronounced “ghost”, an acronym of Global Hosted Operating SysTem and the trading name of Ghost Inc.–seehttp://G.ho.st) has been marketing an early version of our Virtual Computer (VC) product and service since April 2007 under the tag line “no walls” [1].

Steve, you have apparantly personally acknowledged that we are an innovative competitor to Microsoft® Windows® [2]. The press sees the G.ho.st Virtual Computer and Microsoft Windows as competitors too [3].

What are you thinking in rebranding Microsoft Windows with the tag line “life without walls” and with the prominent messaging “IMAGINE NO WALLS” (with the word IMAGINE small and the words NO WALLS in large all-caps font right on the Windows home page http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ and [4]), marks which are virtually identical (or, ignoring the much smaller “imagine”, actually identical) to our trademark, and using these marks on the Windows home page and in a massive marketing campaign since last Thursday?

G.ho.st believes its Virtual Computer is offering consumers the first real conceptual alternative to Windows in decades. We have been using our limited marketing budget to market the user benefits of our fresh approach to personal computing under the trademark “no walls” for the last 17 months and teaching the market that “no walls” represents benefits such as

* A personal computing environment (desktop, file system, apps) which is not “walled” into – or installed on–a physical devices–but is hosted and available from any browser
* A personal computing environment which is free of charge and not only for the well off
* A personal computing environment that does not require administration–no need to install or update software, no need for the user to perform backups or fight viruses
* A personal computing environment which is online and allows all users globally to share with each other directly.

Steve, does Microsoft Windows Vista® offer these benefits?

But now you have taken a tag line virtually identical, or identical, to our trademark, without license, and applied it to a competitive product which has none of the same benefits. You are apparently spending more each hour than we were able to spend in total since April 2007–reportedly you are spending $300m in total–conveying these messages and completely overwhelming our own marketing using a virtually identical or identical trademark.

In addition the suspicion arises that Microsoft’s disrespect for G.ho.st’s intellectual property is designed to scare off potential investors in G.ho.st or partners of G.ho.st and prevent us from giving our innovative Virtual Computer solution a fair chance in the market place.

After consulting our advisors we believe that your use of marks highly similar or identical to our trademark in connection with the promotion and sale of your Windows products creates confusion as to the source, sponsorship and/or affiliation of the products before and after the point of sale, and/or is likely to cause mistake, and/or is likely to deceive the public, especially considering the acknowledged competition between Microsoft Windows and G.ho.st.

Given the size of Microsoft and the reputation of Windows and Microsoft in the market, the use of these marks is also likely to create reverse confusion where consumers are likely to be confused into thinking that our VC technology is being offered by Microsoft or that some of our technology is being licensed by Microsoft or that Microsoft has licensed our tag line or that Microsoft has achieved the same technical features that we offer–none of which are apparently true.

We are advised that these actions may constitute, inter alia, violations of 15 U.S.C. §§1114 and 1125 (Lanham Act), common law unfair competition, palming off and dilution of our trademarks under Federal, State and international laws.

In order to resolve this matter amicably, and given the phenomenal rate at which you are advertising these marks and harming our business, G.ho.st requires the following by the end of business Thursday, September 25, 2008:

1. Written confirmation that Microsoft has ceased and desisted all unauthorized use of G.ho.st’s NO WALLS mark and any marks similar thereto, including, without limitation, the LIFE WITHOUT WALLS, IMAGINE WITHOUT WALLS and IMAGINE NO WALLS marks, on your products, Web site, marketing materials, advertising and other promotions and written agreement to not use these marks or similar marks in the future;

2. Publication in the same media where these marks were displayed or advertised of an appropriate clarification that Microsoft has not licensed G.ho.st’s technology or trademark and does not offer the same features and benefits as the G.ho.st Virtual Computer that have become associated with the theme of “NO WALLS” from G.ho.st’s own marketing.

3. Negotiating a good faith license for your past use of these marks (and should you wish it and should you and we agree on terms–also for future use).

We reserve the right to publish our own clarifications on this matter. However given that G.ho.st’s marketing budget is a tiny fraction of Microsoft’s, we would obviously not be able to substantially reduce the massive confusion on our own, nor is it our responsibility, and any publication by us would in no way reduce the need for the remedies above.

The above demands are made without prejudice to all of the rights, remedies and causes of action that G.ho.st has, including, without limitation, recovery of damages, injunctive relief and attorneys’ fees. We look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely

Zvi Schreiber
CEO, G.ho.st

Mobile: [redacted]
From US: [redacted]
__________________________________
Sent from my free G.ho.st Virtual Computer

[1] G.ho.st US Federal registered trademark application for mark “NO WALLS” #77576419.

Examples of the press covering G.ho.st’s “no walls” tag line include:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/27/business/compute.php

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=996686

Examples of our use include:
http://G.ho.st

http://G.ho.st/vc.html

Brochure: http://www.g.ho.st/images/pager.pdf (advertised on http://www.g.ho.st/home/Literature.jsp?language=en)
Booths http://www.g.ho.st/images/photoGallery/web2expoSF20083.jpg (Microsoft exhibited at some of the same events as these booths)

[3] E.g. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10035532-52.html

http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080528/ghost/

http://itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=42556

[4] E.g. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/possibilities/products/default.aspx?vindex=2

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/possibilities/default.aspx?ocid=ftp

The Entire D6 Gh.os.t Demo

Kara Swisher — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:57:51 +0000

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Unfortunately, due to issues too complicated to go into, we have to post all the D6 interviews in several 15-minute parts (I know, I know).

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

In the less contentious spirit of DEMOfall and TechCrunch50, two demo conferences taking place simultaneously this week, we’re happy to bring you all the demos we had onstage at D6.

Last, but not least: the G.ho.st Web operating system, which lets users access their desktops from any computer with an Internet connection and is also a joint technology venture between Israelis and Palestinians.

The video of the G.ho.st demo is in two parts.

In part one, CEO Zvi Schreiber shows off the “Global Hosted Operating System,” which is hosted by Amazon, yet another if the many attempts to make cloud computing real.

In part two, Zvi goes over the various features and applications of the G.ho.st product and discusses the business plan and how the Israeli-Palestinian collaboration works.

[ See post to watch video ]

D6 Conference Recap

John Paczkowski — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:59:17 +0000

Here are all of the highlights from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference, organized by day and speaker:

Day One

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft

You would have loved Windows 1.0. Walt. You would have LOVED it.”

–Ballmer

Session post | Videos: One and Two

Windows 7 Demo

Day Two

Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com

People loved their horses, too. But you don’t keep riding your horse to work just because you love it.”

–Bezos on the difference between physical books and digital ones

Session post | Videos: One and Two

Bobby Kotick, Activision

The social element has really transformed the gaming experience.”

– Kotick on the impact of games like Guitar Hero

Session post | Video

Guitar Hero IV Demo with Tony Hawk and Paula Abdul

Howard Stringer, Sony

If we were any more successful, we’d be bankrupt.”

–Stringer on the success of Sony’s LCD business

Session post | Video

Barry Diller, IAC

Hollywood is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

Session post | Video

Michael Dell, Dell

I could take him.”

–Dell on his chances of success in a brawl with Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Session post | Video

Jerry Yang and Sue Decker, Yahoo

I will never be a CEO again.”

–Yang

Session post | Videos: One and Two

Jeff Bewkes, AOL

AOL is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Web. We don’t get no respect.”

Session post | Video

Nathan Myhrvold, Intellectual Ventures

We invest in the creation of ideas… It’s like Baby Mama, with me as the mama.”

Session post | Video

Demo: G.ho.st Web Operating System

Lets users access their desktop from any computer with an Internet connection.

Session post | Video

Tom Glocer, Thomson Reuters

We have one great advantage over bloggers: we write once, and sell many times to many different media outlets.”

Session post | Video

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook

I won’t ever stop until you’re either the biggest thing around, or you’re dead.”

–Kara Swisher on her relentless coverage of Facebook

Session post | Videos: One and Two

Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation

I want to meet Obama. I want to know if he’s going to walk the walk.”

Session post | Full Session Videos: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six

Day Three

Demo: evri

An application that graphs the Web via grammatical information.

Session post | Video

Demo: 23andMe

Web-based, direct-to-consumer genome services.

Session post | Video

Melinda Gates, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

All lives are equal.”

Session post | Videos: One and Two

Demo: TransMedia’s Glide

A mobile-operating system that cuts across all operating systems.

Session post | Video

Tom Rogers, TiVo

The TV set and its primary position in the home isn’t going anywhere in the future.”

Session post | Videos: One and Two

Demo: Deka

The “Luke Arm” prosthesis, a state-of-the-art bionic arm.

Session post | Video

Kevin Martin, FCC and Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless

You’re the chairman of the FCC. How did you allow this to happen?”

–Walt Mossberg grills Martin on the lousy broadband situation in the States

Session post | Videos: One and Two

Get Ready for the Yahoo Reorg: Whither Yang?

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:42:21 +0000

“Where’s Jerry here? He is like a ghost,” said a Yahoo (YHOO) exec to me last week.

The exec was referring to the plans for a major overhaul of the management structure of the troubled Internet company–the dreaded and inevitable reorg that BoomTown wrote about in detail last week that is expected to be announced this week.

Many execs have told BoomTown that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has been strangely absent from the communications around the reorg, which has been driven largely by President Sue Decker.

Well, ghosts aren’t real, but fear and uncertainty clearly are at Yahoo these days.

Thus, as Yahoo gears up for its annual meeting on Aug. 1, where it faces a proxy battle with billionaire Carl Icahn (whose billowing sails have been much trimmed by the huge drop in Yahoo’s stock price recently), here’s a certainty: Yet another bumpy week for Yahoo, its employees and shareholders.

Last week, BoomTown outlined the changes that Yahoo is likely to announce this week, part of a massive management overhaul that has spurred the departures of top execs and focused much attention on how Yahoo is going to be organized by its leadership for its many challenges going forward.

That is, of course, if that leadership does go forward.

This is not to say that either Yang or Decker is under any particular pressure to go, despite all the turmoil with the Internet giant and also from external forces.

In fact, I think Decker will soon get the CEO job outright.

As I wrote in my post last week of other possible CEO alternatives for Yahoo (and I stand by my pick of Mark Cuban, my friends!):

It’s the obvious question, of course, to ask whether the co-founder of Yahoo has what it takes to manage the company through what will doubtlessly be a very difficult year. … As Yahoo continues to be in limbo, pressure is sure to mount heavily on Yang, and it is not a stretch to imagine he will not remain in the top job at the troubled company for the long term.”

It is even easier to imagine after the last week, which saw much upheaval in the exec ranks, with several top managers headed out the door and others clearly considering scaling the perimeter fence.

There’s lots of reasons for that, including the form of the expected reorg that might put power–besides with Yang and Decker–into the hands of two key execs: Hilary Schneider and Ash Patel (both pictured here).

Patel, the longtime Yahoo exec who is currently EVP of its Platforms and Infrastructure division, is expected to lead a new Global Products group–made up of “global” properties and products.

Much of the Network division, which until recently was under the leadership of the now departed Jeff Weiner, will move under Patel, including search, mail, instant messenger, front page, platforms and social networking.

And Global Partner Solutions EVP Hilary Schneider is apparently to be placed over the entire U.S. region. Schneider keeps all of ad sales, but gets the Yahoo Media Group (which was also in the Network division).

That shift will bring together Yahoo’s vast content properties, like Yahoo Finance, with ad sales and align them more closely.

How closely Decker will hew to this setup, which was proposed internally over the last two weeks with little input from most managers, will be interesting to see.

Obviously, plans could change given the tepid reaction internally to it.

Most interesting to me is how involved Yang will be in the proceedings. Because, despite all the disappointment, the iconic Internet figure does still have a significant place in the hearts of his Yahoo troops.

But, even that has its limits and Yang is in more and more danger of truly losing those hearts and minds, especially if the company does not stop feeling like it is lurching from one drama to the next and very, very soon.

Said one former Yahoo who has been in touch with many still there and who still very much cares for the company (as most who have left truly do) about what the mood among current Yahoo employees is, in a common sentiment I hear often these days:

“They expressed frustration with the endless reorganizations and unclear future of the company. Also said that morale is really low and people feel like they aren’t seeing true leadership from the [senior] exec team.

“I definitely sense less sensitivity for Jerry in the conversations I have with people who are still with the company. Six months ago, whenever I mentioned that I feel sorry for Jerry (because I do) given everything going on, most people would nod or say, ‘me too.’ Now, the reaction is usually a groan or rolling eyes.”

As in: Boo!

Demo: G.ho.st Web Operating System

John Paczkowski — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:13:54 +0000

Walt and Kara return to the stage to introduce G.ho.st’s CEO Zvi Schreiber, who will demo the company’s Web-based OS.
What is G.ho.st? Two things: It’s a Global Hosted Operating System, one that aims to give users a free, Web-based virtual computer that lets them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. It’s also the name of a one-of-a-kind joint technology venture between Israelis and Palestinians. G.ho.st is taking disparate Web-based applications and unifying them into a single environment. The platform is hosted by Amazon.
The demo begins with a view of the desktop. Looks very much like the typical Windows desktop, although one with a very unique desktop background.
Visible on the desktop an RSS viewer and an MP3 player.
Navigating over to the system’s file viewer now. Demonstrator pens a document in the browser sandbox. Walt asks if it’s possible to open G.ho.st docs in other applications like Microsoft Word. Schreiber says to do that you’d need to download the document to the desktop.
G.ho.st is free and comes with free storage. How does the company plan to make money? G.ho.st plans to charge the service providers whose services it aggregates. G.ho.st is like a mall, says Schreiber. We don’t know how to make money, but the service providers do. And we take a percentage of the revenues they collect through the OS.
Who are G.ho.st’s competitors? Answer: Microsoft. (Somehow I doubt Microsoft feels the same about G.ho.st.)
Lots of interest and support for the Israeli-Palestinian collaboration that’s driving the company.

[ See post to watch video ]