Chipmaker needs a little relaxation therapy

We all know that the IT industry is a tense place, driven by sales and the need to ensure that someone else isn't stealing your customers, ideas, technology or staff. Because of this, intellectual property is a serious issue in an economy driven by information.

Just ask Intel. It has never tired of protecting what it sees as its intellectual property and has always been particularly security conscious. But even Intel appears to have gone too far this time, and drifted into the realms of parody.

There was a famous story on satirical news website TheOnion.com, saying that Microsoft had applied to patent ones and zeros. The article poked fun at the idea of technology companies attempting to claim intellectual property rights for everything.

Now, in the clearest ever case of life imitating art, Intel has presented a filing to the US patent and trademark office requesting that a charity that teaches yoga in prisons, battered wives' refuges and inner city schools across America be denied its application to trademark the phrase 'Yoga Inside'.

Intel's argument is that, having spent millions of dollars on the 'Intel Inside' brand, people will immediately associate Yoga Inside with Intel. Of course, computer users are always confusing convicts sitting in the Lotus position (I can feel a call coming from IBM's lawyers at any moment) with the innards of a PC.

Does Intel believe that taxi drivers have been avoiding asking people: "Where do you want to go today?" for fear of incurring the wrath of Microsoft?

Or that with the forthcoming European launch of the Xbox we will no longer be able to say: "I was watching the box last night", without paying some form of royalty to Redmond?

If that is so, and it appears to be the case, someone had better get word to 1970s folk musician and Led Zeppelin protégé Roy Harper, whose song Laughing Inside could possibly be construed as an infringement of Intel's rights.

The chipmaker actually spends a lot of time fighting off anyone attempting to use the word 'inside' as part of a brand.

This is a sensible move, as words matter; but taking on a charity when you are as big as Intel ($6.9bn estimated revenues for this quarter) simply makes the company look insecure and even more paranoid than it ought to be.

Maybe it's time for some company meditation classes. These might prevent it turning itself inside out because, from the outside, it is all starting to look a little tense. Yoga, anyone?