Is it just me or are our beloved technology companies trying to own the alphabet? Not the whole thing –just a few individual letters.

The worst offender is of course Apple, with whom the letter “i” has become synonymous. But they are not alone…

IBM spent many a year attempting to dominate the letter “e” with constant refrain of e-business, e-servers and e-suite……..resulting in that joke about the processing system they sold into Yorkshire Water; the E-Bygum.

Not far behind is Sun with the letter “S” as in Sparc and Solaris. While Citrix and Intel seem to be having a bit of a squabble over the letter X.

I could go on, but you get the idea. What intrigues me though is what would happen if these big companies with their armies of lawyers were to succeed in getting their way and patenting the letters they love so much?

Would we© be© re©duce©d to usi©ng copyri©ght si©gns© e©ve©ry ti©me© we© e©counte©re©d the© le©tte©rs©

Or would w b forcd to top ung thoe lttr altogthr?

Julian