Keeping track of every Jaguar E-Type, with your help.
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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.

I’ve updated the car pages to pull a photo up next to the dataplate, with some other minor re-arranging of info to accommodate the change. If you see anything funky, try a browser refresh, though I did change the version number of the CSS file–hopefully you won’t have any trouble. Another change is that browsing cars is no longer a “post data” request, so refreshing the screen isn’t so annoying.

I have tested in IE6, IE7 and Firefox. IE6 sucks, of course, but we persevered. No guarantees on any other browser.

If you’re curious as to why some cars show the photos they do, the software looks for the most recent exterior photo that falls within certain aspect ratios. Failing to find one of those, it looks for the most recent “action” photo within the same parameters. Failing that, it looks for any photo within those parameters. Failing that, it throws its hands in the air and stalks off in a huff.

The parameters are 300 pixels wide or wider; and a height which is between .66 and .77 of the width (a normal horizontal photo is .75).

Browsing cars is much more entertaining, in my opinion.

If you have a great photo of your car you would like to see on the calendar, please upload it to the site and let me know about it. I’m hoping to have these ready by sometime in September, so please do so soon. (Thanks for the encouraging words in the other blog entry about the calendars.)

Please leave a comment below if you want to suggest a particular photo.

Yet more threats of a lawsuit (again from an XK owner–not sure what that means). Hopefully this, too, will pass. If not, you might see an appeal for legal help go up on the front page, and perhaps you’d consider donating.

It’s always a demand for the name of the person who added the information, which I don’t know, obviously (what you see on the site is what is in the database, there are no hidden fields). I kinda wonder what these folks want to do with that name. Pistols at sunrise?

So, would anyone be interested in 2008 Calendars?

I was a bit surprised at how much effort I had to put forth last year to gather the 24 images I needed for the XK and XKE calendars (and many thanks to the folks who let me use their images). The printed calendars require very large originals to look decent, so it’s a bit of a chore to gather them.

I’m fairly confident I don’t have the materials needed to publish an XJS or Saloon calendar this year.

I wish the margins were better or the calendars cheaper. It feels a bit shoddy to ask $20 for a calendar, but $15 of that goes to the printer, and while the 100 calendars sold last year added $500 towards the hosting costs, obviously that’s not a fabulous return on a week’s work. I could lower the unit cost considerably by using a “real” printer, but I’d have to fork out of pocket for them up-front plus relying on me to mail them out in a timely fashion is just begging for disaster.

What do y’all think of the final panel of the 2007 XK Calendar? That type of collage takes a bit of time but also allows me to use photos from the web site at native resolution, which means I only need to go through and choose the images, and not worry about chasing folks down for their large originals. (I obviously would be hard-pressed to find time to do a bunch of them.)

Please let me know your thoughts.

I’ve posted a new section which is available from the left-hand navigation–look for “About…” This is a place to get general information about the model in question, such as a model guide, explanations of car numbers, colors, etc. A couple of these used to be available in “resources” but they felt better in a single “general info” section.

The section is also very sparse for some models. The XKE had a head start, and I hope you like my photographic model guide. And the XJ-S has a huge advantage in that Geoffrey Green, a marque expert, was more than kind to write a guide to both the models and the car numbering scheme.

If you would like to pitch in, help is always welcome!