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[OM] problems with 4T electronics; trademarks

Subject: [OM] problems with 4T electronics; trademarks
From: William Sommerwerck <williams@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 04:55:05 -0800
"When the 4T circuit came out, remaining stocks of older 4 boards were
either destroyed or returned to Tokyo as unusable."

John Hermanson is no doubt correct about this. However, I purchased my
4T body about six years ago, and it suffered from excessive battery
drain and "flaky" electronics. After three failed repair attempts, Eric
(who, unfortunately, is no longer at Olympus USA) agreed to replace the
body. It has performed flawlessly, but whether that was because Olympus
finally fixed the problems with the OM-4T's circuitry, or I just got a
good sample, I don't know.


> So there you have it. At least in the USA, the "i" is owned by
> my employer, Intel. Look inside any Intel documentation and you'll
> see the claim. Maybe Olympus dropped the "i" from the OM-4T in
> the US market for fear of infringing the Intel trademark.  :-)

"For shame. BMW must pay a fortune to Intel for use of the "i" in their
car names such as the 535i."

Intel's use of 'i' is as a prefix; it's long been used in Europe as a
postfix meaning "improved" (I think).

In any case, you can't "own" a letter as a trademark, except as part of
a name. (A claim to ownership is not legal ownership!) Intel has
trademarked _complete model names_, such as i486. Anyone else is free to
use i as a prefix, provided there is no confusion among the trademarks.
Intel could not object to 'iMac', for example. 

The OM-1 was originally called the M-1. Leitz protested, and Olympus
changed the name to OM-1. I remember Burt Keppler complaining in Modern
Photography -- "Does Leitz think it owns the alphabet?" -- but Olympus
had, indeed, copied someone else's trademark. (Which shows what they
thought of the Leica.)

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