Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!basselope!shiffman
From: shiffman%basselope@Sun.COM (Hank Shiffman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: White Knight 11?
Message-ID: <130448@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 18 Jan 90 22:21:56 GMT
References: <23300.9001161812@hilliard.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: shiffman@sun.UUCP (Hank Shiffman)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 41

In article <23300.9001161812@hilliard.ecs.soton.ac.uk> cjc@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Chris Colbourn) writes:
>Someone told me there was an earlier note on newsgroup about the latest
>Red Ryder comms program update but I must have missed it. Anyway, I
>received a letter from FreeSoft announcing the update to version 11
>and giving a story about the name change to White Knight. The owners of
>the Red Ryder trademark (who are they?) apparently wanted a lot more
>dosh for its continued use and so FreeSoft decided to change the name
>to White Knight 11 (isn't/wasn't that the name of a famous chess
>program for the BBC micro and other PCs?)! Anyone know the full story
>behind this? Could be that the name will have to change again!!

The company that owns the Red Ryder trademark wrote a rather stinging
rebuttal to this in an issue of MacWeek a couple of months ago.  They
claimed to have agreed to a small royalty early on based upon Scott
Watson's company being small and poor.  He was supposed to provide
regular reports on the sales of his program so they could keep track
of how much they were to receive.  They claim he never provided such
reports.

When the agreement was due to expire, Watson wanted the same
arrangement as before, despite the fact that he could hardly claim to
be a struggling, impoverished programmer.  (Read Watson's own comments
in the introduction to the White Knight manual for proof of this.)
The trademark owners insisted on a larger royalty based on the success
of the product, although they categorically denied Watson's claim that
it would have required the doubling of the price of his program.
Since Watson didn't want to pay any more than a token amount for the
name he decided to choose another one.

Disclaimer: I don't know any of the players in this saga.  I just know
which account *I* find more compelling...


-- 
Hank Shiffman                                     (415) 336-4658
Marketing Technical Specialist
Software Engineering Technologies               ...!sun!shiffman
Sun Microsystems, Inc.                          shiffman@Sun.com

Zippy sez:
  NEWARK has been REZONED!!  DES MOINES has been REZONED!!