[lazarus] About logo

[Liebrecht Venter]

"Michael A. Hess" wrote:

> Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> >
> > A little off-topic, but whoever heard of trademarking the name of a
> > city ?
> > What kind of nonsense is that ?
>
> Well it goes beyond that. They weren't even the first. Did you ever hear
> of Delphi Automotive Systems? http://www.delphi.com
>
> --
> ==== Programming my first best destiny! ====
>
> Michael A. Hess      Miracle Concepts, Inc.
> mhess at miraclec.com   http://www.miraclec.com
>
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I reply to this since I have first hand experience. ( I apologize if it is
a bit long )

1) I am the patent holder of several international patents in process
control
2) I am ripped off on a dayly basis and take the crap as it comes and deals
with it..
3) My patents produced products such as at http://www.accudry.com
http://www.accudry.net etc and many others.

That said, I am an opensource convert and wish there were such mechanisms
for hardware in order that I could shed the expensive patenting process to
protect myself.

I proudly use fpk to develop my embedded software on, for these products
although the lack of assembler migration and port control is a serious
handicap and dos just has to do in some cases.
My PhD in numerical relativity also boasts with FPK routines for which
credits to fpk appears.


Regarding Intellectual property issues.

The "noise" laws.
As an intellectual property holder, it is better to be ripped of some time
and be paid occasionally than to try and inflict yourself to let everybody
conform all the time.
In the end everyone girates to that former state and so does MS Borland and
myself eventually.
Therefore chances are that you will not be approached..and if you do it
might not be wotrthwhile to proceed.

Regarding the logo

The LAW  is:
1) not at all concerned whether a cheetah is agressive whee's on the pillar
or anything for that matter ---it is irrelevant -- so just forget about
such emotrional concerns. You could put Mike Tyson on there for that matter
as long as you ask mike permission and Borland has zip to do with it - OK?.
since you have the Cheetah's permission....that is settled.
2) extremely concerned about whether the customer will be confused by your
logo in believing that they buy or get Delphi by downloading your
software.  This is EXTREMELY serious. In this regard the "objects may be of
concern..., but in general you should change it a bit... Make the circles
ovals the triangles with two long legs and one short....the sqaure a
parallelogram etc etc.....  Although they still might have claims you
really make it much more difficult for them.
Then change the darn pillar, use a different pillar if you want. All that
is left then is association.
3) only concerned with people they can claim money from. As Lazarus has no
vested capital....I dont think they will try to sue you...at most you will
be forced to change the logo...if it comes to that. I personally would not
sue you as you have no money ----period. You might get a bit of serious
threats and hoo/ha but that's that.
4) This has nothing to do with the Lindows case either...we all know that
Lindows are sued because of their ability to compete and the nameplay is
really a weak case...but all Ms has to go on.
5) I will see my patent attorney at Venable Washington during the next two
weeks and will run the issue past him and report back to you....but I guess
the answer wont differ much from the above.

My personal opinion....Lazarus is already better than Delphi's drunken
Kylix wine-port...( I would not  waste my professional time writing to you
if  Kylix worked for me).
The logo is not of that much importance and you should keep your eye on the
ball......which is..
If you could rather only get those darn step-into/over and breakpoints
sorted out the whole DOS/windows Pascal/Delphi community can migrate.
Believe me there is a large Delphi/Pascal community ready to convert to
Linux ...except.......
At the moment everyone I know stays away from FPK/Lazarus and just laughs
at it when they hear there are no debugger options when I try to win them
over to Linux/fpk. That is the reality I found...and my reality too.