We're not allowed to talk about Smartbooks unless we're talking about Smartbook's Smartbooks

It would appear that we are not allowed to use the word "Smartbook" unless it belongs to the Smartbook company - TechCrunch:

Smartbook AG does indeed own a trademark on the word smartbook in most of Western Europe, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and a couple of other countries. The company sells laptops that are named Smartbook, so I guess the company is well within its rights to try and protect their trademark in any way it deems appropriate.

In the past, the company has gone after companies like Qualcomm and Freescale, who use the term as a generic denominator for portable Internet-ready devices that are neither smartphones or netbooks in product descriptions

It would appear to have managed to trademark the word Smartbook in a number of countries:

In Germany, Austria, Australia, Benelux, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea, Monaco, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Sweden, Singapore, Turkey and Ukraine the word Smartbook is a trademark registered by Smartbook AG. Therefore, in these countries the word may not be used in the sense described in this article.

What I want to know is how you get a Trademark on a word in so many countries that is already prior art (Google has references going back to 2001) , and for example Wikipedia defines a Smartbook as:

A smartbook is a concept of a mobile device that falls between smartphones and netbooks, delivering features typically found in smartphones (always on, all-day battery life, 3G connectivity, GPS)[1] in a slightly larger device with a full keyboard. Smartbooks will tend to be designed to work with online applications.[2] Smartbooks are likely to be sold initially through mobile network operators, like mobile phones are today, along with a wireless data plan.[3]

Irony of ironies, Smartbook itself doesn't actually make Smartbooks - they make laptops which on their own website they called Netbooks