News - Court rules that Transformer Prime is a tablet, as well as an Autobot

[HEXUS]

Hasbro fails to obtain preliminary injunction.

Read more.

[aidanjt]

Yay!! Good sense prevails. But will it last?

[KeyboardDemon]

I'm glad it worked out as it did, I'd like to see an end to this, in the films, comics and cartoons it was alway Optimus Prime, not Transformer Prime.

The article ended with

We wonder if Hasbro will team up with Autodesk next, in order to bring an injunction against LG's Optimus 3D Max smartphone

and I was thinking the exact same thing about nVidia's Optimus technology which also features on some of the Asus current line of laptops.

[kingpotnoodle]

Motto of the story, trademarks on made up words are much easier to defend, dictionary words like Transform(er) and Prime which have quite common meanings are rather harder to enforce.

If Asus had called it the Thundercat Ho! then they might have lost...

That said I'm kind of surprised it ended this way, knowing the US courts etc and that those two words are definitely associated with the very active Transformers franchise. Asus could have used Transform (no er) Pro, Transform One etc etc, so the use of Transformer Prime did look rather like a cheap cash in.

[crossy]

... the Judge stated "... nor can it be said that there is any similarity in the use or function between Hasbro and ASUS's products." The court also decided that ASUS's argument was strengthened by the fact that its tablet did indeed 'transform' as it connected and disconnected from its keyboard dock.

OMG, a US judge showing some common sense!
Okay, I do kind of back up Hasbro's case a little by giving my Transformer the hostname (on my router) of "Optimus" and jokingly refer to it as "a tablet in disguise"

there are also, clearly, quite a few ways in which the firm can improve its marketing strategy

Yep, announcing a premium product, then waiting a matter of weeks before launching "version 2" looks like a real bone-headed move by Asus. Oh, and the widely-reported issues with the ICS upgrade on the Prime can't have helped matters.
Don't know about elsewhere, but around "these here parts" the old Transformer doesn't get anywhere near the promotion that other tablets (Galaxy Tab, Xoom2 or - ultimately - the iPads) do. In which case, I can kind of appreciate that this'd be one reason why they're not shifting by the bucketload. HMV, Staples, PC World, they're all the same - iPad first, then Galaxy Tab, then Xoom2, then poor old Asus (if they've got any at all!) stuffed in with the Archos, Advent and other "low end" brands.

We wonder if Hasbro will team up with Autodesk next, in order to bring an injunction against LG's Optimus 3D Max smartphone.

Oh definitely, I'm wondering how LG got away with that one...

[Blademrk]

Well, they've also got a TV series called Transformers Prime