Let me the first
To copyright the terms whoop-de-do and So and/or What...
Microsoft has been awarded a trademark on its design for a store selling all things high tech. Trademark registration 4036534 covers the design of “a retail store with four curved tabletops at the front and rear side walls and a rectangular band displaying changing video images on the walls.” The trademark covers stores …
Now I hate Microsoft as much as the next man, but I cant believe they want to set up more shops, for several days In LA ( that's the usa you know) I walked past one of the Microsoft shops, daily.
The poor shop staff were all alone in there, on the the one hand its sad for the shop staff on the other at least they have a job,which hopefully pays more than basic for them, its lonely in there,now if they have some free coffee at least they would have some company.
I nearly went in to say hi, but I guess i didn't feel sorry enough for them.
Surely a trademark is.... that? A device used to mark a product you are trading? You know, like the apple with a view out of it, the flying windows thing, the big green acorn, the v-with-a-tick card logo, etc etc. How the hell can you.... oh, wait, American legal system, I forgot, I'm truly sorry, I thought the sort of stuff that turned up on Ally McBeal was supposed to be fictional...
I expect to be seeing great things from Microsoft's retail operations. They have a strong and vibrant consumer electronics line that promises to become even better as the kinks in WP7 and Win8 are worked out. They also have the opportunity to do some very good SME demos for cloudy technologies and all-in-one servers that ought to impress, if they can get bodies into the stores.
As much as I like to deride Microsoft for a great many things, they have spent some time earnestly creating some good consumer electronics kit, even if they don’t personally manufacture it all. (They do licence their software, after all…)
Xbox and all of it’s accessories. Phones. PCs & Notebooks. Soon, tablets. Media centers of various kinds, home automation kits, HTPCs,
I choose to see this as a starting point, not an abject failure because they aren’t bigger than Apple in every little thing. Marketed correctly (Aha – and here is Microsoft’s critical failing!) Microsoft does have “good enough” consumer gear to sell.
Trademarking the store only makes sense. It prevents others from ripping off the store once (if?) Microsoft gets enough own-brand recognition that others are wanting to invest time, money and effort into ripping them off. Think about it: Microsoft gear isn’t “Microsoft-branded, sold only by Microsoft.” It’s partner-made stuff.
That means that anyone can set up reseller agreements with all the various manufacturers and resell [i]the exact same equipment.[/i] Thus having a distinctive storefront is really Microsoft’s only way of differentiating themselves in a retail environment without completely cutting all their partners off at the knees.
Worth the effort by MS, IMHO.
Goat Jam in criticising Microsoft shocker!
Yes, you have to reboot more often with MS patches than you do with some others, but if you'd ever bothered to use Win 7, or 2008 server, you'd know that you have to reboot after a patch far fewer times than with older OSes. It most certainly isn't *every*single*time*.
Then again if you actually used MS software rather than slagging it off all the time, you would have known that, wouldn't you?
So presumably they have been into every store in the USA and checked the current layout and desigend one thats different? What happens if they haven't and one does? Do the current owners of a shop with a layout they have had for years get sued by MS for misusing the MS trademark, or do they get to sue MS? Any guesses for which way around it would actually happen? Also, does this mean every shop in the USA needs to trademank their shop design to prevent themselves getting sued by somebody?
I'm in Minneapolis, near their big store in the Mall of America. It is actually pretty cool, and is exactly opposite the Apple store. The massive array of monitors is impressive. Yes, they do need some new products to draw people in. They need them desperately, and they know that. Windows 8 with 'Metro', on a tablet that doesn't weigh 8 pounds and have a whining fan, would be a good start.