Yeah, I remember that episode well, and it sounds like it might be happening again. I hope for the best for him, he really is a nice guy, but I haven't talked with him for a long long time.

If you hear anything, drop me a note, okay?

Regards,

 

"Yeah, that was me who raised that idea. Having gone through over a dozen patent, copyright, trademark cases in Federal court and seen the results in real life that would be an appropriate way to go about this. Send him his royalty or lost profit if he ever arises again. That would be the moral thing to do, you probably wouldn't have to end up doing that through the legal system." - IceShark -

Then you need to also send some money to Porsche/Bosch for the "basic" copyright
infringement by copying the original EPROM code which has been done here.

A case in point is the Intel vs AMD copyright violation of Intel's math coprocessor
where AMD used some of the Intel assembly language routines.

Bottomline: Legally, most performance chips would be considered copyright violations.
The issue comes down to whether Porsche/Bosch really wants to pursue it or not.
They pursue use of the their trademark (Porsche emblem) no matter how minor, though.

 

That's because at law it is necessary to demonstrate you are actively defending your trademark, or you are liable to lose it.

Silly, perhaps, but it almost forces Porsche, or anyone else with a valuable trademark, to write a nasty "cease and desist" letter in response to all known violations, no matter how small and commercially insignificant in themselves. Otherwise, anyone who wanted to challenge their exclusive right to the trademark could point to the time they didn't tell Pcar-guys.com, or whoever, to stop using their mark.

The rule of thumb in legal matters is: If you've read a law, and it makes sense to you, read it again. Because you have almost certainly misunderstood that law.

-Mark

 

C&D letters are fine and you're right that it is important to protect one's trademark, else it be cancelled. However, having assisted some clients with trademark and UDRP (domain name) cases, I can tell you that ALOT of the C&D letters are really scare tactics. Often they claim rights they do not have and wrongly characterize their rights. Further, it isn't generally the trademark holder that is the one righting the letters, but instead outside counsel. So the outside counsel, needing to up their billable hours, does internet searches for every internet site that is even remotely similar.

The worst offender is Monster Co. (formerly Monster Cable).... Do a quick search on them and you'll find they've sent out a C&D to everyone who has "monster" somewhere in their domain name, regardless of whether the goods/services are "related" (which is required under the law).

Anyway this is completly OT..

 

Well, maybe not. There's always the possibility that Wilk's sudden drop-from-sight might be due to some C&D letter. Pure speculation, of course, but there are obviously a few players with an interest in this area at various levels in the food chain between Wilk and Porsche...

-Mark