Microsoft sued for live use of Office

A SMALL, ONLINE services outfit for professionals has decided to take on the might of Microsoft in a trademark dispute about Office Live.

Office Live has decided that it will take legal action to stop the Vole using its company's name. The name of the company was registered in 2002 and the outfit says it has used the Office Live trademark since early 2001.

The Vole, on the other hand, only started using Office Live for its online productivity tools targeted at small businesses in late October 2006.

Office Live started its lawsuit in December but decided to see if it could reach an out of court agreement with Redmond first. The settlement talks broke down and the lawsuit was served on Microsoft, which now says it will fight it.

The Volish argument is that Office Live, the company, did not have a trademark that covered any products that Microsoft flogged.

However, Office Live CEO Lenny Targon said that the Mighty Vole thought it could do what it liked because his company was much much smaller.

It was shocking that Microsoft would have so little regard for another company's intellectual property rights that it would select a name belonging to another company, he asserted. µ

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