SkyDrive Could be Renamed BingDrive, FetchDrive, and NewDrive Following UK Court Ruling

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InvalidError

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Technology and dumb rulings unfortunately seem to go hand in hand.

I dare not imagine how many innovative people's ideas are getting squashed or shackled by fears of getting screwed up by frivolous patents and trademarks from established players... it is already ugly enough when it happens between giants that can afford this nonsense.
 

megajynx

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Yea, lemme go ahead and upload my sensitive documents to my BINGDrive. I can hear the shareholders cheers from here. At least call it BallmerDrive to be purposefully ironic.
 

stevejnb

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Yeah, no kidding. It was a scary precedent when the world's two largest tech companies - Apple and Google - both started to put more money into patents than into the R&D departments. Though, it is a step in the right direction that Google has been the first major patent troll ever actually convicted - and hopefully far from the last, as every one of these big tech companies has dirty hands in this area. A lot of entry level companies with good ideas suffer because of this, and we all suffer as a result.

As for the topic of this article itself, well, I'd say go with Bingdrive as it's all but impossible to have future patent infringements as a result, and Fetchdrive in particular sounds just stupid. Newdrive isn't bad I can't say I like it much. Calling it Bingdrive may well hurt adoption of the service - or improve Bing's name, since Skydrive is actually quite a good cloud service.
 

rb420

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Funny I should come across this article almost immediately after removing skydrive from windows explorer in 8.1 via the registry.
 

stevejnb

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I'm actually curious RB, why did you go to such ends to remove it? Was it causing you problems? As far as I can tell, if one doesn't want to use it, they can just ignore it. I could be wrong... Is there some insidious coding making it so that you can't avoid it even if you just save and load documents locally and ignore the option of using Skydrive?
 


To keep the UI clean. I know I hate having icons sitting around taking up any screen real estate I have no use for and will do the same when I get around to upgrading to 8.1.

Same goes for getting rid of the Windows button to access Metro. If it doesn't activate a Start menu it is pointless. It is much quicker to just hit the Windows key on the rare instance I use the Metro interface. Which is to search for infrequently used programs like Command Prompt and Run.

It's also an annoying reminder of the unwanted push for cloud integration. Such as making it all but impossible for the average user to figure out how to setup 8.1 with a local account.
 

rb420

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To be completely honest the whole procedure took me less than 2 mins, including the time to google it. I Just have always liked to be able to get rid of options I don't use and remove the clutter.

Chalk it up to personal preference.
 

falchard

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I think the name S:\ would be cool. Or better yet Sky:\ Stick it to those UK pricks.
I think multi-nation corps are getting pretty roughed up out there from courts with clear country bias. I don't see how in anyway anyone would mistaken Sky Drive for something with a different name that has been shutdown for 2 years. This is getting relatively disgusting as US courts come in favor of US companies, Korean courts come in favor of Korean Companies, and Taiwanese courts come in favor of Taiwanese Companies; despite there not be an actual case.
 


Don't worry, US courts will stick it to US companies if need be. Where do you think Verizon came from? AT&T had a monopoly and the US courts forced them to break up and that's where a lot of the newer companies came from.

I honestly think its a stupid ruling as well. If it was still in service, then maybe I could see it. But since it is shut down and its clearly called Microsoft SkyDrive, I think it is a BS ruling.

If you mix something up like that it's your own fault. This is the companies assuming customers are that brain dead, well in their defense most are, but still it's an insult to their customers really.
 

elmo2006

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"Sky claimed infringement on Microsoft's use of 'SkyDrive' in all forms relating to cloud storage services because of its own cloud storage offering 'Sky Store & Share.' Though Sky Store & Share was wound down in 2011, Sky worried that users would be confused by SkyDrive."

There was concern that users would be confused about the name when it clearly states "Microsoft SkyDrive"!
I seriously believe that the so called original owner failed at its attempts to provide a cloud solution and wanted to ensure MS failed as well.

Complete BS.
 

stevejnb

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Couldn't you just delete the icons rather than removing Skydrive completely though?

Also, have they made it much more difficult to set up a local account on 8.1 compared to 8.0? With 8.0 it was basically like other Windows versions - it asks you to input a user name and password for your local account during setup, and that's that. I'm guessing they've changed it trying to force Skydrive on less able users?



Fair enough. I'd assume it adds some system overhead whether you use it or not, so if you really have no intention of using it, why not get rid of it?
 

GreaseMonkey_62

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This is certainly one of the dumber rulings I've heard in a while. So this company Sky, hasn't had their service active in 2 years and they are worried that handful a people will be confused. It's not even called SkyDrive. It was called Sky Store and Share. WTF!!!!!!
 
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