It's generally known in our hobby that Mr. Jardine has a tendency to *cough* elaborate upon his involvement in the development of lightweight gear. That being said, his book still lit a flame where I wanted to learn more about the light side of things. I was working/procrastinating/talking to a friend last night when I wanted to show him the picture of Ray and Jenny's tandem that has the shock-mounted laptop holder in the frame and noticed immediately the number of terms followed by (TM). They were:

Campfire(TM)
Gorget(TM)
SplitZip(TM)
Draft Stopper(TM)

-and in all nested pages, the terms were always referred to as ****(TM). This guy's pretty serious about his trademarks! I already had a tab open where I had been searching uspto.gov for my own company's purposes, so I hopped on over there and plugged in "Gorget" to the trademark search. No results were returned (the uspto uses a session system where I can't post a link, but you can do it yourself- Do a basic trademark search for a Combined Word Mark) - but I thought that maybe I had screwed up the search or that it just didn't show up so I tried the other three. "Campfire" returned a long list, but the closest matches (just "Campfire") weren't his. SplitZip returned nothing, and Draft Stopper was for four dead trademarks belonging to a weatherstripping company.

Being a friendly-like Texas girl, I thought that I might gently remind Ray that the (TM) is, you know, reserved for things that have some documentin' with the gub'mint. I sent this email:

"While I was searching trademarks for my own business and procrastinating by looking at your website, I gave a quick search on the USPTO website for the four items you have listed with trademarks. Gorget and SplitZip came up with no matches, while Draft Stopper came up with dead trademarks for weatherstripping and Campfire gave an assorted list. I might have botched the search, but you might want to consider registering these with the Trademark office so that your trademarks don't refer to sealing drafts around doors and windows or removing the misleading (TM).

Happy trails!

Kit Waal"

Now, that's friendly-like, right? Ray seems to think it points to mental illness- and notice that he doesn't mention the trademarks at all.

"Dear Kit,

Could you give us the URL of your business? Since we have nothing better to do, we would enjoy
analyzing your business and making certain you have everything exactly right, then sending you
gratuitious emails about what you do not. We enjoy this type of activity because it helps fill an
emptiness inside us, supposedly. And the reason we are always trying to fill the emptiness is that
we have not learned how to eliminate it. But we are working it, so don't give up on us yet!

Thanks and all best wishes,

- Ray"

BURN! I'm sure that the rest of you could also get your own personal attack from Ray with very little effort, too, if you wanted. I was certainly expecting more of the standard issue "Well, I realize that they aren't trademarked officially but I was hoping for some stopgap protection until I got around to filing" or "You idiot! You screwed it up. My trademark numbers are xxxxxxx. Now go away!". I best go finish writing my patent 'cause I sure as hell don't want to get caught labeling it as "patent pending" when that's a lie (and illegal).

Kit,

I got a "kick" out of Ray J's reply to you. Very similar to some email replies he was kind enough to send me on entirely diff matters. I also got a chuckle out of his replies to me - pretty witty.

Let me just relate some thoughts that went through my mind a few months ago when I read his email replies to me. Maybe they will prove helpful here.

I like to give the fellow the benefit of the doubt. He prob. gets inundated with emails - both fr/ friend & foe alike. Not knowing him, though i would certainly like to, i took his replies as good natured ribbing and got a chuckle out of his replies to me. I figure that for any one thing I could correct him on, he could correct me on a thousand. [i should clarify that i wasn't correcting him, but merely was asking him questions.]

Assuming, for the moment now that he wasn't being entirely humorous in his reply to you, but was intending to be primarily sarcastic and caustic (don't know him so maybe he was, or maybe it's his sense of humor - don't know): he may have already read a couple dozen "nasty grams" previously that day, & so, not knowing you & that you were just trying to be helpful & not critical, just projected an earlier mindset from the "nasty grams" into his reply to your email. This type of response is human. It's pretty understandable. That's not to excuse it, however - just understand it & put it in perspective.

Anyways, I truly hope his reply to you is soon forgotten & it doesn't continue to be irksome. Hope these words help some. Please don't take them as an attack. I first reminded myself of these very same things a couple of months ago, and am only passing on advice I already gave to myself. If i have inadvertently offended you with my words here, i am truly sorry and apologize. please understand, this was not my intention. feel free to tell me to mind my own business & keep my two cents to myself in the future. i can respect that (i hope?!!!).

Hey...BTW...I enjoy reading your posts to these forums & appreciate them. Keep 'em comin'.

Edited by pj on 09/09/2005 14:48:08 MDT.

Ouch! Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the quilt.

Roger,

cute. very clever wording.

sorry. double post caused by pressing F5 while having the web page displayed.

To BPL staff: I am entirely, positively, absolutely, 100% certain that this is what caused the double post. I know this because I was looking at the web page with my post last & I ONLY pressed F5 (thinking that maybe i'd see any newer posts that might have been added). the web page refreshed & voila', a dbl-post appeared. Don't know if this is something that y'all can "trap" on your end??? I know. I should be more careful.

Edited by pj on 09/09/2005 10:05:17 MDT.

The trademarks stood out to me because they're so blatant. I wouldn't have flagged it at all if he hadn't slapped the (TM) onto so many terms- after all, I was on his site in the first place to show a friend something I thought was neat. Knowing his reputation for being quick to direct credit to himself, I was expecting a USPTO search to come up with a long list of trademarks associated with his name. I found none. The fact that he claims so many trademarks and has filed for none of them (which is ILLEGAL) is almost harder to reconcile with the idea of him that I've gotten by reading about UL.

I'm actually quite amused at the response. I was expecting either no reply or the standard BS, but an ad hominem attack is the sort of thing that gives you a rousing belly laugh in the morning. I have no doubt that he had already sorted through a dozen nasty emails beforehand with an attitude like that! Maybe the giardia from not treating his water or skeeter bites are making him grouchy. I guess I get to join the "Ray Jardine was an ass to me" club.

Hold on now… Get it right!

" Ray Jardine was an ass to me ™ " club.

;)

Kit,

for my part, any added explanation of your intentions was unecessary. i understood your org. post properly and assigned no blame to you.

after Roger's second post (once again, quite clever), i'm bowing out now. this thread is gettin' too rich for my blood.

You can "TM" anything you want as long as you don't infringe on someone else's "TM". "TM"'s are actually totally meaningless and afford you little protection.

(R) is the symbol for registered trademark, and that is the one requiring gub'mnt registration. An (R) means you own it and it's protected.

I have to hand it to Ray Jardine... he has inspired many, and has come up with some great ideas. On the other hand, I have to question some of his claims. One example is his "Butterfly Clove Hitch"; granted, he may be the first to call it that, but being one familiar with tying knots for many years, including quick release clove hitch that he calls the Butterfly Clove Hitch, I am sceptical on his "inventing" it. I'm sure others skilled in knot tying have also made the same quick release knot. Point being made is that it seems Mr. Jardine is quite boastful in his perhaps specious claims.

However, I do like the definition of TM as Totally Meaningless as compared to Trade Mark.

Edited by mikes on 09/09/2005 15:10:18 MDT.

Ray has invented other things that were much more significant... and he's certainly accomplished a lot... so if he wants to say he invented some knot or sprinkle TM's all over everything... whatever... that's cool with me.

I agree that his response to you was mean tho'... although he seemed to be trying to be funny about it. I don't know the man, but I guess that's just who he is. Gotta just brush if off I guess.

Edited by davidlewis on 09/09/2005 15:46:17 MDT.