Microsoft says it did trademark Azure

28 Oct 2008

Microsoft Corp. late Monday denied it had neglected to register "Windows Azure," the name of its new cloud computing platform, with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

According to the spokeswoman, Microsoft submitted a trademark application for "Azure" last Friday.

Earlier Monday, Ray Ozzie, the company's chief software architect, unveiled Windows Azure, a cloud computing version of its operating system. Azure, which will compete with Amazon.com Inc.'s Elastic Compute Cloud, targets developers who create online services and software.

Searches on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database run throughout Monday failed to find either "Windows Azure" or "Azure Services Platform" as registered trademarks. Microsoft used both names to describe its Software and Services technology.

The spokeswoman laid the blame on the agency. "I can tell you that it is absolutely not correct that Microsoft 'forgot' to register the trademark," she said in an e-mail. "It is up to the Patent Office to update its database, but you will see it listed there shortly, if not already."

Searches on the Patent Office database done at 11 p.m. EDT Monday, however, continued to come up empty.

By Gregg Keizer

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