When Microsoft Threatened to Sue Us Over the Letter “E”

Everyone knows that if you don't try to protect your trademark, you end up losing it.

The logos are somewhat similar, and I'm also not surprised that nothing came of this.

The "threat to sue over the letter 'e'" is an exaggeration to get pageviews, and this article should be deleted.

While I understand how the response was many years ago, I fail to see how someone couldn't verify a letter that they wrote (it tends to be easy at least to know your style of writing and it's hard to believe he wouldn't remember writing to Gates about this). And what was the form of this letter (a printout of an old email, a copy of a physical letter, something hand written)? Certainly Doug didn't verbally remind him. There must have been something physical to look at.

His letter by the way is naive with respect to trademark law. Microsoft most likely wasn't objecting to the "e" but the stylized element above the "e". Steve's letter addresses only the "E".

I highly doubt it was over just a letter...

For those that haven't read, a good description: http://www.lettersneversent.com/pages/about/index.php

Fortunately Georges Perec had already prepared a book that would circumvent Microsoft's claim on the letter E.

I imagine the inherent daftness of the situation became apparent and the Microsofties just forgot about the case...