Europe is a rather hostile market for large technology companies (see Google and Microsoft). The latter had to pay a fairly large fine in 2011 for violations of antitrust legislation. However, the problems do not seem to have ended.
According to the BBC, the General Court of the European Union ruled that Microsoft cannot register the name Skype as a trademark in Europe because the name is too similar to “Sky”, which today belongs to the Sky Broadcasting group, also known as BSkyB or Sky News Corporation.
Basically, the judge noted that the name Skype of Microsoft could be confused with Sky, and therefore the trademark cannot be registered.
This does not mean that Microsoft must rename Skype immediately, but it may need to do so within the coming months in order to avoid paying a fee to the British company that holds the rights for Sky.
Microsoft has already expressed its intention to appeal the court's decision and stated that it will not rename Skype until the final appeal decision is announced.
“We are sure that there is confusion between these two trademarks and services and we will appeal. This decision does not require us to change the names of our products in any way “, said a company spokesperson.
Sky, on the other hand, states that it is a fair decision, because the similarities between the two names could indeed cause confusion among its European customers….
It should be recalled that this is not the first time that Microsoft has lost a legal dispute from the same company, as it was forced to rename SkyDrive to OneDrive because its name was similar to Sky.
Will the Skype service change its name this time?
