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| Authored by: artp on Wednesday, August 15 2012 @ 12:12 PM EDT |
Circular buttons are actually the last thing to be
protectable.
Take a look at the tips of your fingers. Are they square? If
they are, you are probably a Minecraft character, and need
to get off the computer.
The functional part of the button is roughly circular. That
is the part that transmits pressure from your finger to the
button mechanism. Anything other than the circular part of
the button is non-functional. Square buttons are
protectable. Actually, the design patent for odd shaped
buttons of all sorts is probably held by PlaySkool.
If you look at old machines, you will find a lot of round
buttons. My first typewriter, which my parents got for me
for high school back in the 60s, had round buttons. Adding
machines back into the 19th century had round buttons. You
could look it up.
The first machine that I can remember that had non-round
buttons was the IBM Selectric typewriter. It had those
quasi-rectangular with rounded corners (!) buttons for keys.
But then, I wasn't paying attention because I didn't know it
would be on the test.
The law not only needs practical experience, it also needs a
memory.
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Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: artp on Wednesday, August 15 2012 @ 12:47 PM EDT |
First, a joke:
Q. Do you know why farmers don't wear green tennis shoes?
A. Because John Deere doesn't give them away.
If you look at farm equipment, you can usually tell the
manufacturer from the paint job. Whether this is protectable
or not, I do not know. Several lawsuits over the years have
made me think that it is protectable.
John Deere green is different from Oliver green, aside from
the fact that Oliver was merged into White Motor
Corporation.
Allis-Chalmers orange, Minneapolis-Moline gold, Massey-
Harris bright cherry red, Case red (that faded to orange),
Ford gray and red (and their current blue), Hart-Parr green
with red wheels, Caterpillar yellow, Ferguson slate gray,
not to mention my McCormick Deering/Farmall/International
Harvester red (that fades to pink) tractors. All are
distinctive, although the reds can be hard to distinguish at
times, and the grays are almost impossible to distinguish
after they fade. But maybe the grays didn't care about trade
dress?
Odd that the Japanese manufacturers seem to fall into place
with the distinctive paint jobs.
There have been some high-profile cases involving John Deere
and Kinze Manufacturing, mostly devolving from the fact that
Kinze bought John Deere's planter boxes and built a better
(and larger) planter that farmers really liked. They have
been fierce competitors ever since.
As for farmers wanting to match colors on their equipment -
get real! Even on the large corporate tax farming
operations, they don't care about that beyond getting
quantity discounts. We really need to get you out here where
you can get something on your boots that isn't shoe polish.
The real boss out on the farm is the weather. That is who
everybody (except the corporate masters) is fighting. That
is why so many farm communities pull together when times get
tough - they are battling a common enemy. They help their
competitors out. Where else does that happen?
I'll finish up with another farm joke - at least it's told
in rural communities.
There was once a lawyer in a small rural town who was having
trouble making ends meet. He couldn't keep the bills paid,
and his secretary hadn't been paid in months. Another lawyer
moved into town. Now they're both rich.
(Rural moral of the story - Suing someone bankrupts both of
you. Work it out.) Something that Apple ought to consider.
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Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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