Weeks ago, on Nov 1, 1:11pm, Joshua Chamas wrote:
> and they don't own perl, just the camel.
Actually, they don't even own the camel. The image is in the public
domain. Look on any of the "20 Gazzillion Clip Art Images" CD's and
you'll find it along with all the other O'Reilly animals. O'Reilly
use public domain images so that they themselves don't have to pay any
royalties on the image.
So you're free to use the Camel wherever you like, as long as it is not
associated with Perl. Once you associate the Camel with Perl then you
violate their trademark.
> The camel
> is not O'Reilly after all, it is perl, and perl is owned
> by the world. Because O'Reilley has not gone to any lengths
> to separate the camel from perl, the camel is perl.
The Camel is O'Reilly <--> Perl. The Camel existed before Perl,
Perl existed before the Camel, both existed before O'Reilly. But
O'Reilly put the Camel onto the front of a Perl book, made that book
popular and thus established the Camel's association with Perl. They
have the right to use the Camel with Perl and vis versa because they
"started it".
> I think the spirit of this is that if you are not
> competing with O'Reilly's commercial activities
> with respect to perl, then don't worry about it.
I'm afraid not. I produced a T-Shirt design for the London Perl
Mongers with a Camel on it, but was told that we would have to submit
the design and T-Shirt samples for inspection by O'Reilly and then pay
royalties to them on each T-Shirt. If I showed you the design I might
get in trouble, so please don't anyone go and look at
http://www.kfs.org/~abw/london.pm/ (You'll notice that the image
is a GIF which will get me in trouble all over again with another bunch
of idiots, but I'm beyond caring).
I don't begrudge O'Reilly the right to exploit the trademarks that they
helped to establish, but I don't like them exploiting the community that
helped to establish Perl itself. I can understand that they don't want
to see poor quality, slapdash T-Shirts going around that might, just might,
possibly be misconstrued as an O'Reilly product, but they could surely
afford to be more pragmatic.
A
--
Andy Wardley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Signature regenerating. Please remain seated.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For a good time: http://www.kfs.org/~abw/
