With someone on BeShare asking "Do PalmSource own the BeOS name?", I decided to do some investigative reporting. Based on US trademarks, they do - an application for a trademark was filed on February 1st of 2005.

However, Be owned a lot more trademarks than just BeOS - the usual claims to copyright included Tracker, BeBox, GeekPort and BeIA, among others

BeBox is no longer a trademark - it was marked dead on April 24th, 2004. The GeekPort was marked dead as a trademark on July 24th, 2004; and BeIA was never issued - the application was abandoned, and marked dead on August 22nd, 2002.

The Be Logo is still trademarked to Be, in black and white and in colour, with a number of commencment dates from 1999 to 2001. A black outline of the Be Ear, however, was abandoned on September 2nd, 2001.

Be Everywhere, a trademark Be never used in public, was abandoned on April 26, 2002. I can only assume this was linked to BeIA devices being used in multiple locations - probably with a marketing campaign like that of the Intel Centrino platform years later.

The trademark of BeDepot.com, a domain that Be no longer own, is still owned by them, however, the linked trademark BeWare was abandoned in March 2000.

The Be name itself is marked as a dead trademark, as of October 26, 2003. The other trademark they used to claim to own, on Tracker, I can't even find any reference to.

These are all US trademark details, and are all from the US Patents Office website, as of today. Don't take them as being fact, if you're planning to go around selling products with these names :)