Like I said in an earlier comment, I don’t know what the solution is given that no matter what cool name you come up with for something it’s bound to be used by someone else somewhere already.

It might even be that they (Xerox, Smartbook AG) don’t really care about the media using the trademarked term in a more generic fashion, but the mere fact that they took steps to protect their trademark early on can later be used to argue that they still deserve the trademark. Why is this important? Well, if they actually lost their trademark, someone could come along and sell knock-off products under their brand name.

Actually, instead of just speculating, I should just point here for info that’s more likely to be accurate and well-thought-out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark

If this company truly is after protecting their trademark then they should be contacting businesses using the term to sell products.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Trademark

Looking at GigaOM’s Terms and Conditions page, I find this blurb (which I think is pretty standard boilerplate text):

“You may not use any GigaOM logo or any other proprietary graphic or trademark without GigaOM’s express written permission.”

Did GigaOM trademark the name GigaOM? Would I not be violating this rule if I blogged about GigaOM and used that name and maybe accompanied the article with the GigaOM logo that I ripped of the GigaOM website? Or are bloggers and the traditional press excluded from these restrictions?

Clearly, in today’s global world it’s pretty much impossible to come up with meaningful names for new products that haven’t been used somewhere else for something similar (or even unrelated). Not really sure what to do about it.

You have used the term “smartbook” in at least 6 instances for this article. The Germans will be along shortly…
LOL LOL

PS
I wonder if you space it ‘smart book’ if they can do anything?