Smartbook to Bloggers: Don’t Say Smartbook

Smartbook doesn’t want bloggers to use the term “smartbook.” Good luck with that.

The Germany-based seller of laptops owns a trademark on the word in most of Western Europe, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and two other countries, according to TechCrunch, but the term has been adopted by the industry to describe a device that falls somewhere between a smart phone and a netbook.

This will likely turn out the same way Twitter’s attempt to prevent use of the word tweet ended up.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.