Keeping track of every Jaguar E-Type, with your help.
xkedata > blog > 2007

I updated the “marketplace” eBay searches to include eBay.co.uk. Because certain cars are common over there that aren’t over here, there may be a bit more “noise” in the listings.

(And please do everyone a favor and do not patronize those fly-by-night companies that clutter up the web with their cheap plastic floor mats and cheesy seat covers, which they list for every car ever made. I swear you could enter “Vauxhall 30/98 parts” in a web search and come up with ten firms offering you oxygen sensors, floor mats and other trinkets, none of which you want to see.)

Thanks to the efforts of Paul and others, we have broken (or at least landed on) the 10,000 cars barrier on XKEdata this evening. Thanks, everyone!

And that’s despite the calendar and coffee mug “sales” (if a few over a few years is selling something, ). The calendars and such seem to bother a few people extraordinarily. Not sure why.

Because I was on such a tight time schedule after the Ford debacle, I hadn’t got a chance to see the calendars until the samples arrived today. They’re not bad, not quite up to the quality of last year’s (I suspect calendars aren’t the first order of business at Lulu), but still pretty good.

One thing is bad, though, and that’s the holidays on the calendars themselves. They give you the options to have many different nation’s holidays on the calendar, and I opted for several different ones. I’m staring at a calendar right now that does the same…unfortunately, Lulu’s output mechanism isn’t too bright, and holidays that are shared among all of the nations overflow the date box for that day. Bah. The preview showed only the US holidays anyway, so it wasn’t too clear.

I’m resetting them to only show “US” events as that will at least not overflow the date boxes. My apologies for this snafu. It wouldn’t be the data sites calendar without one major cock-up. I revised the calendars online to correct this from this point forward.

There’s now a “captcha” for entering comments. Spammers sure take the fun out of the internet…

There are some big numbers brewing on the various car and image counts.

• Images: We now have 73,000 images across all of the sites. The XK site just passed 10,000 images!
• Cars: We now have over 16,000 cars across all of the sites. The E-Type site is creeping towards 10,000, less than 300 to go!

Thanks to everyone who adds car or photo data to the sites! Especially to be thanked is PaulS, who tirelessly seeks out cars and adds them at a rate I find astonishing.

You know, screw Ford, pardon my French. They are mistaken and I’m not going to let a bunch of…well, you probably see where I’m heading. So I’m going to switch my vending to a different online provider, and cease selling any T-shirts and the like for the time-being. But I will sell calendars.

The other online vendor’s calendars don’t seem as “fancy” as Cafe Press’ did, so they may be a bit more modest in presentation. I will also be changing the logos a bit on the calendars to eliminate ANY chance that trademarks could be construed as having been used.

I ask y’all to be patient and to please buy one or more when I have them posted for sale. They’re nice to have and they do help support the site! Price should be about the same, in the range of $15 – 25 US (that’s probably 2 Euros or $10 Canadian, at the rate the dollar has been plummeting).

I (mostly!) enjoy working on these sites but the hours are long and financially they have the outlook of a rusty E-Type entering a first-class body shop. The data sites “balance sheet” would look like this:

Positives:

• Building and maintaining sites that people seem to enjoy
• Meeting some neat people
• A bit of money from Cafe Press and eBay sales

Negatives:

• Threatening and outraged emails from a few people a year demanding (often in all caps) to know who posted their car’s info
• The sheer amount of time it takes to maintain the sites
• The amount of money involved (not even close to balanced with the income above)
• Petty put-downs from other online enthusiast sites and registrars
• And now, Ford’s legal beagles

Normally, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives, but I’m probably just too tired and worn out from regular work at the moment to look at the bright side. There you go, a bit of whine with your entrée.

This was the reply I got from a paralegal at Howard, Phillips, and Andersen, Ford’s attorneys in Salt Lake City, a bunch of boilerplate which essentially, as far as I can tell, puts the money Jaguar is losing directly on my shoulders. My calendars and T-shirts have brought down a mighty empire.

The Ford trademarks and trade dress are some of the most recognizable in the world. Ford takes a tremendous amount of pride in this, and considers its trademarks to be among the most valuable assets. In an effort to both enhance and protect the value of the Ford name and image, Ford is constantly engaged in both promoting its trademarks and policing their use to ensure that persons and businesses authorized to do so use the trademarks in an acceptable manner.

Because of the cachet of the world-famous Ford name, thousands of independent businesses and people make a living from or pursue a hobby related to Ford products and services. Unfortunately, many of these businesses improperly attempt to affiliate themselves with Ford by using Ford trademarks and trade dress (for instance, the depictions or photographs of Ford’s distinctively shaped vehicles) in advertising their products and services. Ford appreciates the enthusiasm these people have for Ford products. Ford in no way wants to put these companies out of business, or prevent these businesses from advertising their products and services in a manner that is fair under Federal and state trademark laws. Ford cannot, however, allow these businesses to use Ford’s trademarks and trade dress in a way that creates the appearance that these businesses are affiliated with, sponsored by, or approved by Ford when they are not.

Ford’s trademarks and trade dress serve several important purposes. First, seeing the distinctive Ford logo on a product or business is an immediate indication that the product or business is authorized by Ford. Second, a product bearing a Ford trademark is an indication that the product is of high quality and has passed Ford’s strict quality control procedures and inspections. Third, placing a Ford trademark on a product indicates that Ford, or an authorized agent, is the source of the product, and that the product is genuine and not counterfeit. When the public purchases a product or service sold under a Ford trademark, the public has every right to expect that the product or service is the “real thing.” All of this, in turn, contributes to the value of Ford trademarks as legitimate and important business assets of the company.

At times Ford enthusiasts question why Ford is so adamant about policing its trademarks and preventing unauthorized uses or infringements of them. It is quite common for someone who is using a trademark without permission to say, “I’m giving Ford free advertising, so why does Ford care?” Ford cares because it is important that Ford be able to exercise control over the quality of the product or service bearing Ford’s trademarks. If a disreputable business sells an inferior product or service that uses a Ford trademark, the poor quality of that product or service reflects on Ford. A person who is disappointed by that poor product or service will not take the time to determine whether Ford in fact authorized the use of its trademarks.

They will, probably rightly, assume Ford to be the ultimate source of their disappointment and may transfer their loyalty to a competitor.

If a business not affiliated with Ford uses any Ford trademark, whether through the use of photographs, depictions or silhouettes, or any confusingly similar variation thereof, without Ford’s express, written consent, then that business is violating Federal and state trademarks laws.

That business is also misleading the public into believing that such business is affiliated with Ford. It is also not sufficient for a business to state that it is not affiliated with Ford but continue to use Ford trademarks without permission. The business is still misappropriating the goodwill and reputation developed by Ford, and attempting to capitalize on or profit from Ford’s goodwill and reputation. Even with the best of intentions, unauthorized use of another company’s trademark is against the law and misleading to the general public.

Unauthorized and infringing uses of Ford’s trademarks come in many disguises. Examples of cases in which Ford has successfully pursued infringers include the following: (1) businesses that use Ford trademarks in their business name such as “John Doe’s Ford Repair;” (2) businesses that use Ford trademarks or trade dress in advertisements, including phone book advertisements; (3) businesses that place Ford trademarks or trade dress on products such as shirts, coffee mugs, key fobs, etc.; and (4) businesses that use Ford trademarks in their Internet domain names.

Ford genuinely hopes the public understands the need for Ford to police and enforce the proper use of its trademarks and trade dress. To protect the value of its trademarks, Ford is obligated to object to and pursue unauthorized uses of its trademarks and trade dress, even if the use of the trademark or trade dress does not appear offensive or objectionable. If Ford does not do so, it may be deemed under the trademark laws to have abandoned its trademark rights. We thank you for your understanding and support.

This just reinforces my thought that someone did a search on Cafe Press for “Jaguar” and shut down anything that wasn’t a mammal, and perhaps some things that were. Whatever. I also like how the boilerplate contains no information on what can be done about it–does Ford have a channel for clearing these sort of activities?

Ford has decided to bring a trademark infringement action against my sale of merchandise in the Cafe Press store. Calendars are off until further notice. I “make” a few hundred dollars a year from the fund-raising merchandise there and cannot afford to pay an attorney to even attempt to sort this out. The sites cost enough in time and effort already.

Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.

Frankly, I can’t get too worked up about this (but others can), so I’ve changed the definition of “Series 1.5″ cars to match what I guess is now the standard set by the JCNA. This means LHD cars numbered before

• Fixed Head Coupe 1E34583
• Open Two Seater 1E15980
• Two Plus Two 1E77709

Are now considered to be Series I cars. This contradicts the numbers published for years by Skilleter and cohorts, but apparently the JCNA research is much more solid.