Microsoft sure makes some great bloopers while choosing a new brand name. After aggressively pushing the “Sky Drive” brand name for its cloud storage service after it closed down Live Mesh, it was taken to court by BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting).
The court case was about trademark infringement mainly over the usage of the word “Sky” in a brand name. Microsoft embarrassingly has lost the case and will now need to rename “SkyDrive” to something else. It basically means all efforts of Microsoft to promote SkyDrive as a brand have come down to zero.
Microsoft has chosen to not keep fighting the case and has settled with BSkyB and agreed to rename the service. The confidential agreement apparently also agree on a financial settlement.
BSkyB has given some time to Microsoft to go ahead and re-brand their cloud storage service.
Microsoft’s similar disaster with “Metro”
This is not exactly the first time Microsoft has named a service and ended up having to rename their service because of legal troubles. It branded its design style on Windows 8 as “Metro Style”. The last August, it decided to drop the the name “Metro” from any branding. Hence “Metro UI” finally ended up being called “Windows 8 style UI”.
What new name do you think Microsoft should call “SkyDrive”? Do drop in your comments.
(via The Verge)
2 Comments
They should call it as WinDrive.
It definitely seems like Microsoft is reeling from some bad public relations over the last several months, everything from this SkyDrive blunder to their DRM issues with the upcoming Xbox One. In my opinion, they’ve been making some strides on repairing the damage to their good will with the Xbox by eliminating all the controversial digital rights issues, as well as having some incredible sales on Xbox Live. Hopefully they’ll be able to do a similar repair job for SkyDrive.