This is the last tech blog on the face of the earth to report this news, but USA Today reports that

Microsoft  is demanding that a small company change the name of a computer program because it contains the word “Excel”…

I’m no trademark lawyer, but I do know this: MS will win.  Not because they have a better case in court (it won’t get that far), but because MS may have a few more lawyers on staff and couple of more dollars in the bank.

LeeAnn Chen, SavvySoft’s Marketing Director, sent me an email with many good points defending their position, including that there are numerous other third-party applications that use Excel in their name.  One comment that she made about why MS would initiate this actions is as follows:

If all the business logic written in Excel moves to C++, it’s the death knell for Microsoft’s spreadsheet monopoly.

As Ms. Chen has the word “Marketing” in her title, it’s hard to say if she really believes this.  Obviously, this program won’t have any affect on MS’s monopoly.  In fact, you have to own Excel to use TurboExcel.  I just can’t believe MS would care about this.

The long and the short of it is that creating compiled spreadsheets is a feature that Microsoft should have offered a long time ago.  They haven’t yet, and I doubt they ever will.  If they had (or if they do) you wouldn’t need the speed or protection benefits that TurboExcel offers.

Having said that, I can’t believe those scoundrels at TurboExcel would use Microsoft’s name like that.  If MS let’s this go without a fight, pretty soon you’ll see blogs using Excel in their names.

Thanks for reading Daily Dose of Generic Spreadsheet Products.