You’d think Microsoft would have enough lawyers hanging around to avoid problems like this, but maybe not enough of them are devoted to trademark issues. The company has said its next version of Windows will be called Vista—but the Vista name is used by roughly a gazillion other products. So far, response from other Vista marketers has been mixed. One complains that the phone is ringing off the hook with queries about a product it’s not selling; another theorizes that a quadrupling of its Web site’s traffic isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For its part, Microsoft says it has done its trademark homework and hasn’t received any complaints about the name.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor