IBM has been rushing around trade-marking everything it owns things like Enterprise Systems Architecture, ESA/370, MVS/ESA, AS/400 – and quite a few that others reckon they own: causing the most excitement are the words Big Blue, which IBM has now decided it ought to own; the nearest IBM has been able to get is to register the name Big Blue Ribbons (what?), but is banging down on companies like Softdisk, which publishes the Big Blue Disk magazine-on-a-floppy, and according to Newsbytes has been doing so since 1986; IBM is also making the life of a Northport, Long Island company, Big Blue Products Inc a misery, claiming in that case that it trademarked Big Blue last year, and that the five person office supplies business is confusing the public and harming IBM, giving it 30 days to drop the name or else; when the Armonkeys have settled that one, they’d better rush out and get a trademark on the tag I’m Big Mother before Big Mother stores start bursting out all over.
