3 Aug
2007
3 Aug
'07
5:04 a.m.
On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 12:38 +0100, Simon Fryer wrote:
G'Day,
This seems to be slowly drifting off topic.
On 03/08/07, Gordon JC Pearce <gordon at gjcp.net> wrote:
[VCF being a trademarked name in Europe.]
I don't really care what it is called.
Sellam, if you're so enthusiastic as to set
up a "rival" VCF to spite
someone setting up a VCF-a-like, why not just set up a VCF in the UK?
Strange, I didn't recall Sellam typing anything like this but I'll From yesterday evening:
1) No, "Vintage Computer Festival" is not trademarked internationally,
nor
do I have any inclination to invest the enormous amounts of money to do
so. Besides, if anyone did want to try to put on a vintage computer
festival and call it the "Vintage Computer Festival", there's a simple
solution to that: I would hold a real Vintage Computer Festival down
the
street from theirs on the same dates and advertise the hell out of it
and
ensure that the wannabe "VCF" only got two attendees (who would be
stragglers from the real VCF up the way ;)
check my email to find the original message. I took
the suggestion of
17:50BST, 2/7/2007 or thereabouts
a rival VCF is that one could be undertaken if someone
was going to
set one up and would risk damaging the image of VCF other VCFs. I am
sure that if we were to drop a couple of friendly emails to the right
people, have them share their experiences to improve the event, we
would not only be able to offer a better event but could also use the
name in a way that would add value and credibility.
I'd rather not use the name at all, if that's the sort of attitude we're
facing. This is not to say anything against Sellam, who does great and
important work for the classic computing community; I'd rather just use
a different name and avoid any potential hassle. Sellam can run a
VCF-UK if he likes, and I'll be glad to see it and perfectly happy to
come along with a stand.
Now, we could all type about this, discuss the finer
points of
international trademark law and call each other names, or we could
push ahead, think of a rough location and discuss some of the
logistics and what would be needed to undertake VCF-UK.
Now we're getting down to it. It might be worth talking to the
organisers of other computery events, in particular Linuxy ones (rather
than the "computer fairs" that are just car boot sales of pirate DVDs
and cheap crappy hardware). I was at LugRadioLive last month - maybe we
should discuss it with the organisers of that?
Gordon