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From: eci386!jmm@uunet.uu.net (John Macdonald)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: The "Bell" Logo
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Date: 6 Dec 90 11:27:23 GMT
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In article <15171@accuvax.nwu.edu> mailrus!uflorida!rm1!bapat 
(Subodh Bapat) writes:

|Talking about the Bell logo, is there any truth to the rumor that,
|once long ago, AT&T lost its right to use the Bell logo, as the
|copyright expired and they forgot to renew it? The story I heard was
|that they had to pay a lot of money to get it back from some smart
|entrepreneur who, in the meantime, sneaked in and got the copyright
|for himself.

|Anyone have any facts to substantiate/dispel this rumor?

I don't know about the Bell Logo, but before it gets dismissed as an
urban legend, I can cite a somewhat similar case that definitely did
happen.

In the late 1970's (and possibly still today) there was some
difference about registering copyrights in the province of British
Columbia compared to the rest of Canada.  There was at least one person
in BC who made use of this fact to pre-register trademarks of
companies that seemed likely to eventually want to start operating in
BC.

For that reason, at that time, Perkin-Elmer Data Systems used a
different company name within BC than they used in the rest of Canada
and the USA.  This was just after they changed their name from being
Interdata (and there was a different operating name for Interdata in
BC too).


John Macdonald   jmm@eci386