A name in danger of extinction (or perhaps more accurately: imprisonment), the netbook has gained a new ally in the form of Dell, Inc. The netbook maker indirectly lent a hand to the Save the Netbooks campaign this week by petitioning to cancel a small company's trademark on the term.

Netbooks—compact, low-cost, and low-margin notebooks primarily designed for surfing the Web on-the-go—have grown quite rapidly in popularity over the last year or two. Sales are quite strong, especially amid an economic downturn, but Psion, a company that stopped selling a Windows-CE-powered "Psion netBook" in 2003, is none too happy. As the owner of a trademark on the word "netbook" (which is still live, according to the USPTO), the company recently flexed its IP muscles.�

Psion went on a cease-and-decist rampage in January, threatening journalists, manufacturers, and even bloggers in order to get them to stop using the term by the end of March 2009. It even convinced Google to ban the term from AdSense ads. Psion says it is "reaffirming" its trademark and wants the freedom to perhaps make one in the future, but Dell is having none of it.

In a petition for cancellation filed at the USPTO (PDF link), Dell puts forth three logical reasons for nullifying Psion's "netbook" trademark: abandonment, fraud, and genericness. Psion was issued its netbook trademark in relation to "laptop computers" on November 21, 2000, but Dell points out that Psion is not currently selling laptop computers under the netbook trademark. In fact, Psion discontinued the only line of netbooks it ever sold in 2003, and regards its use of the trademark to be only "somewhat reduced" (PDF link) due to the accessories it still sells for those machines.

Dell's second argument—fraud—is perhaps the most salient. The computer maker notes that Senior Psion Product Manager, Herb Turzer, swore to the USPTO in 2006 that his company was still using the netbook trademark "in commerce on or in connection with all goods listed" in its registration. Turzer also stated at the time that Psion "has used [its] trademark in commerce for five (5) consecutive years after the date of registration." Psion may have actually filed for the trademark in 1996, but it was only awarded the mark in 2000. Dell argues that Psion's discontinuation of its Windows CE netbook in 2003 constitutes fraud on the part of Turzer's statements.

Dell's third argument is genericness, and it isn't hard to see its foundation. Netbooks—the ones people actually started buying, anyway—started appearing in 2007 with Asus' Eee PC. Other manufacturers, like Dell, Saumsung, Acer, HP, and even Sony, have since followed suit with their own netbooks, but the generic use of the term may even stretch back to 2006's OLPC.

Psion did not respond to Ars Technica's request for comment on Dell's petition, though it is surely not skipping in the streets. The company has so far shown no signs of backing down from its threats of "last resort" litigation, and it even links one mobile blogger in its Trademark Statement (PDF link) who is on board with finding a new name for ultra-compact computers.

For now, however, notice and trial dates have been posted (PDF link). Psion has until March 30, 2009 to respond to Dell's petition.