Slashdot | Windows Vista Faces Lawsuits: "When my company wants to propose a name a new product, one of the steps is to go to the USPTO to see if somebody in the same industry has a registered trademark on it. If so, we drop the proposed name and go on to the next. Seems elementary to me. We also try to get the .com domain if at all possible. Lastly, we do a google search to see if the name candidate is diluted or already in use as a claimed (but not registered) trademark. Sometimes we find that the name has negative connotations. Anyway, why doesn't MS hire people who do these elementary steps for them? Perhaps they felt that 'vista' was too diluted to be a trademark on its own, and/or that using the trademark 'Microsoft Vista' is sufficiently distinct from any other use of 'vista', but these arguments seem lazy and weak to me. Other than that, it's a pretty good name.
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