Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!public!thad
From: thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Letter to Commodore
Message-ID: <3056@public.BTR.COM>
Date: 13 Jun 91 11:11:37 GMT
References: <177458@netw23.uucp> <22335@cbmvax.commodore.com> <3028@public.BTR.COM> <1991Jun12.163101.6980@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Organization: BTR Public Access UNIX, Mountain View CA
Lines: 79

In article <1991Jun12.163101.6980@nntp-server.caltech.edu> rknop@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Robert Andrew Knop) writes:
>thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan) writes:
>
>>And Sun Microsystems was "asked" to cease using the trademarked "Yellow Pages"
>>and is now using something that is a trademark of my company.  Same for HP's
>>use of "VUE" (which is also a trademark of my company).
>
>Good grief, can anybody come up with a two, three, or four letter acronym
>that isn't trademarked by somebody, somewhere?  I think it's time for copyright
>law reform; no more trademarking of abbrevaitions, just of the original titles
>and trademarks themselves.  Tradmarking three letter abbreviations is just as
>bad as that guy who tried to copyright every 8x8 bit pattern.

Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, the one that Sun is presently using
is "NIS" which is my company's trademarked name (which is a variation of the
other (longer) National Information Systems, Inc.)

Personally, I think it's kinda neat that Sun is "advertising" (no pun! :-) my
company so much in ALL their docs, esp. since my software will soon be on Sun
platforms!  But I don't involve myself in legal issues and cannot, in this
forum, speak officially on behalf of my company in this regards though I can
relate some interesting background material (which follows).

Their (Sun's) prior use of "Yellow Pages" offended {"something" in the UK,
perhaps British Post and Telegraph (whatever)} whose trademark THAT is.

Regarding "VUE", that is a software program running on 25+ platforms, and HP's
use of it (``HP-VUE'') is highly questionable, esp. if you see article in the
last month's mag HP PROFESSIONAL.  If you look at major software catalogs (I
just happen to have a copy of the 1986 "AT&T COMPUTER SOFTWARE CATALOG" here
on my shelf at home, on page 200 you'll find "VUE" and "NIS" (though we've
since moved to San Jose CA, and "VUE" is up to version 8.* and is a LOT
better on, say, a Silicon Graphics IRIS system or even on others running X
and is now mostly in C)).

And in response to some email re: the "IRS vs. Margolis" case and my use of
``"we" won'', it was delicious irony!  The IRS was using "VUE" (of which they
bought thousands of copies) to schedule personnel, court appearances, track
document and people flow, etc etc and the Margolis Defense Team was using my
4GL (Accent R) to track, index, retrieve, report, etc. the tens of thousands
of documents (and we, at that time several years ago, dedicated about 50% of
a DEC-2060 to them for its processing power and file storage and other support
software); Margolis won the case (and the IRS is *still* buying VUE (now also
known as ``Accent VUE'' (tm)) and I sent a trainer to Washington DC just this
past week to teach more classes to them).

If you saw the front page of COMPUTERWORLD back in Dec. 1989, you'll have
noted that Apple, too, uses my software for "Applicant Tracking" for which they
daily read in the 600-700 *daily* incoming resumes using an optical scanner
which feeds Accent R which then matches peoples' skills to job openings at
Apple, etc. (or, now, probably, automatically sends out "Sorry, No Jobs Here"
postcards to job-seekers (re: Apple's 10% layoffs :-))

Point being (in response to Robert Andrew Knop's "Tradmarking three letter
abbreviations is just as bad as ..."):  "NIS" and "VUE" (and "Accent R" and
"Accent VUE") are NOT simply some casually-trademarked 3-char abbreviations
and/or acronyms.  

And for those who like some fun, I've a number of non-trivial games written in
Accent R (yeah, it's a complete programming language, too, for which I do the
parsers/compilers/code-generators/etc. across platforms such as PDP-10, DEC-20,
VAX, MC680*0 (and soon Sparc, MIPS, HP-PA, etc.)

And for those who enjoy my pokes at Apple, the one that gave me the most
pleasure was the time Apple personnel attended the "Advanced Technical Seminar"
I give monthly (re: Accent R) and, as always, one of my office Amigas is front
and center running VLT (for its VT100 and Tektronix emulations) while I'm
demo'ing Fast Fourier Transforms (the Cooley-Tuki algorithm, which I wrote in
Accent R) and explaining that audio CD-ROM sampling is deficient; the multi-
tasking (on the Amiga) simply blew away the Apple people when they saw the 10+
programs running at the same time I was doing the FFT (from Accent R) displayed
through VLT while running AudioTool (for its graphic-programmability of the
Amiga's audio channels playing various waveforms in stereo demonstrating audio
inter-modulation effects), along with PM, GfxMEM, etc.   And the after-the-
lecture finale was the showing of the pictures from Fred Fish Disk 196 which I
"casually" threw up on the screen as an example of picture-data-base retrieval;
they ALL gasped; it was a blast!  :-)

Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ]