August 12, 1999 Web posted at: 1:10 p.m. EDT (1710 GMT) by Clare Haney

From...

(IDG) -- Question: What do Advanced Micro Devices' latest chips and partitioning panels used in office bathrooms have in common? Answer: They share a very similar name -- Athlon.

Chip maker AMD branded its new processor AMD Athlon to signify that the chip is poles apart both in terms of its performance and target markets from the company's K6 chip families.

The codename for the core of the Athlon chip was K7, but AMD chose Athlon as a name to signify speed. However, as a report in The Wall Street Journal pointed out, Athlon is also the trademark for a material used in bathroom partitions from Trespa North America.

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Gary Bixler, AMD Athlon's marketing manager, computation products group at AMD, based in Austin, Texas, acknowledged that the chip vendor is aware of the other Athlon.

"We certainly did all the legal due diligence in researching the name and hired a leading name-research company," he said today at the Hong Kong launch of the Athlon processor. "As long as you're not in direct conflict in the category you're placed in, the trademark can be used and we feel very comfortable in our category," Bixler added.

He pointed out that AMD did register the chip's name as "AMD Athlon," not plain old Athlon. "We know no one else is using that name," Bixler said. "We expect that there will be stories from time to time about people raising their hands and saying 'We've got that name.' But, we've done the trademark search and there are no conflicts." In the Wall Street Journal article, a Trespa spokesman was quoted as saying that the company isn't pleased about AMD's usage of the Athlon name and is reviewing its options.

Clare Haney is Asia-Pacific bureau chief for the IDG News Service in Hong Kong.