Google gets sued because of Chromebook name

Just because you are an 800 pound gorilla in the industry, it doesn’t mean that you cannot be sued. Google has found that to be true as a Salt Lake City-based company recently filed a suit against Google, where the former claimed that it has the rights to the Chromium name – which by default, would also lead to Chromebook and Chromebox. ISYS Technologies intends for an Utah district court to stop Google, in addition to their partners Acer, Amazon.com, Best Buy, and Samsung, to stop marketing Chromebooks and from selling them later this month.

ISYS is actually the parent company of Xi3 Corporation, where said company rolled out the tiny Xi3 Modular Computer last year, with last month seeing Xi3 also announce a new small form factor desktop PC that was specially designed to run on Google’s Chrome OS – also known as the ChromiumPC.

It seems that Xi3’s efforts to brand their very own device the ChromiumPC will be at the root of this week’s lawsuit. Google has obviously opposed the filing, claiming that Chromium OS belongs to them, even as ISYS contends that Google originally sought the “Speedbook” name for their model but decided on Chromebook after realizing that the Speedbook mark is no longer available to them. This does seem to be a long wrangle in the courts, so sit back and see how the companies will navigate through this tricky patch.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: chromium, Google, lawsuit, sue