EDIT: Oberhausen seems to be a pretty big city, having approx 220000 inhabitants and an active Palm community!
Apparently, Palm wasn’t the first company to have the idea to call a product Centro. Google AdSense has produced the following, pretty interesting URL:
http://www.centro.de/
Following this link leads you to a German shopping mall/entertainment center containing a variety of companies. The mall was opened 1996; and is located in a town called Oberhausen.
As of now, we don’t know if the CentrO folks know about Palm’s Centro phone – if the machine comes to Germany, we could expect a name change…
Related posts:
Dear Tam Hanna,
your comments concerning Oberhausen sound a bit dismissive. With 218.181 residents calling Oberhausen a village is a bit strange. And your (german speaking) “Pluralis majestatis” “… we don’t know if the boys in Oberhausen …” makes it a childish phrase.
You can be pretty sure that the Palm community located in North Rhine-Westphalia knows about the Palm Centro phone.
Best regards,
Stefan
You know that the other day I saw a Centro Bus Commercial and and thought that exact thing. Just Google Centro, and it’ll be the first one after Palm
I checked the Centro Bus website, and it doesn’t seem to be a registered trademark though…
Centro is the Spanish word for “center”. Creating a trademark issue for a commonly used Spanish word doesn’t make any sense.
Centro as a brand is probably being used in the world over as many times as the brand Center.
Cheers
There are a whole chain of shopping malls in Australia called Centro. I don’t think trademark matters as it is only for a specific “type of object”, and shopping malls and smartphones are very different.
Trademark is industry specific, so unless under the German trademark law, handheld devices and shopping centers are in the same category (and who knows, perhaps they are), or consumers are confused as to whether there’s a business connection between the two when there isn’t, this should not be a problem for Palm. A quick look at the for Germany shows many uses of Centro in a variety of industries or classes. {Prof. Jonathan}
Dear Tam Hanna, Centro is the italian word for Center, (centre). If You will come here in Italy, You will see this word maybe 10000/100000 times, CentroMarca, CentroItalia, TuttoCentro, CentroThis, CentroTht…
So why worry? I can quote ProfJonathan: “unless under the Italian trademark law, handheld devices and shopping centers are in the same category (and who knows, perhaps they are), or consumers are confused as to whether there’s a business connection between the two when there isn’t, this should not be a problem for Palm.”
Maybe they will change the name of the Smartphone here in Italy.
———– Stefano rubuano