Official Repton t-shirts on sale | Drobe.co.uk archives

Official Repton t-shirts on sale

By Chris Williams. Published: 16th Aug 2005, 14:06:15 | Permalink | Printable

Only 2 weeks until silly season is over

Official Superior Interactive Repton branded t-shirts are now available for sale from Dave Bradforth. Dave, who publishes the RISC OS port of the recently revamped puzzle game, said he'll slash the cost of postage and packaging to 5p for punters who identify themselves as RISC OS users.

The t-shirts carry the slogan, "Always look on the bright side", although they neglected to include the other half of that phrase: "We could have made the game even harder". They come in extra extra large, and also for some baffling reason, large, medium and small too.

Meanwhile, media impresario Dave is also shifting copies of Retro Player, a one off magazine for last weekend's CGEUK games show. It includes a couple of BBC Micro and Repton related pieces and some of the articles were, er, laid out on RISC OS computers. Go, RISC OS.

Links

I ruined my marriage playing Repton constantly, and all I got was this t-shirt

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Discussion

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Always look on the bright side ... you can support a rock on your head and live until the end of time?

Loris on 16/8/05 2:14PM
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I see Dave is selling these via eBay.

I noticed on eBay a few weeks ago, and more are now available, t-shirts with the original retro Acorn green nut upon them and the word "Acorn" in what seems to be the correct font and style.

8.99ukp is the starting bid - four or so are usually available.

Just do an eBay search on "t-shirt acorn".

The Repton shirt looks a nicer item of clothing to me, mind.

martin on 16/8/05 4:32PM
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martin:

"correct font and style"? It is not easy to get away further from the correct style than the "Acorn" shirts that are on e-bay. The official Acorn logo use an elegant, slender serif font (Bodoni, actually), the shirt uses a very heavy sans-serif font.

wuerthne on 16/8/05 6:08PM
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That is the original Acorn logo. Neverthless, I wonder about copyright.

mrchocky on 16/8/05 6:39PM
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Ordered my copy of "Retro Player" only to find later that ALL of the postage has been refunded, bless him :-)

niftybit on 16/8/05 8:20PM
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mrchocky: AIUI the registration for the Acorn trade mark lapsed some years ago so copyright for the logo shouldn't be a problem anyway.

apdl on 17/8/05 7:17AM
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The RISC OS world has always been short on merchandising - I welcome anyone to put that right. Come one lets have some RISC OS branded apparel, so we finally get all the sad b******s out of their 15 year Clan t-shirts/sweat shirts they always wear to shows.

druck on 17/8/05 9:19AM
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apdl: It might not be a registered trade mark any more, but surely someone still owns the copyright.

SimonC on 17/8/05 10:11AM
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SimonC:

The whole point of trademarks is that they apply to things that are usually too trivial to handle using copyright law. You cannot claim copyright on two yellow arcs forming an M - this is why there is a registered trademark for it. If there is no registered trademark for the Acorn logo any more (though I have no idea whether this is true), it can be used by anyone who wants to.

wuerthne on 17/8/05 11:11AM
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In reply to SimonC: It's actually a mute point. The word Acorn cannot be copyrighted, or trademarked. However what you can trademark is a logotype (a combination of a particular logo/phrase in a particular typeface - ideally with a graphical representation for some sort for clarity). Once you have a registered trademark you can then easily stop someone else using it using the legal system, but you have to stop them, no one else is going to.

With regard to Acorn logos as far as I am aware the registration of the trademark was not kept updated so it has lapsed. With regard to copyright of the image itself Acorn would have owned the copyright, but by now god alone knows who owns it. Not that it matters as by failing to keep up the trademark registration the owner hasn't taken due dilligence with regard to use of the logo/IPR. Basically it's open season.

VirtualAcorn on 17/8/05 11:15AM
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The point isn't moot. Trademark and copyright law can be complicated!

The word "Acorn" can't be copyrighted or trademarked. However, the use of the word "Acorn" in the context of computer hardware or software certainly can be trademarked (think of what Apple would think if someone made the same claim about the word "apple"). The limited context is what's crucial.

As for copyright, the nut logo will certainly still have valid copyrights associated with it that mean that, without permission from the holder (whoever that is now), it cannot be reproduced. There is no "due diligence" aspect to copyright; that applies only to trademarks. So, even if the trademark's lapsed, it is still illegal to use that precise image unless the copyright has been explicitly placed in the public domain or explicit permission has been given. However, if someone drew a new nut logo based on the original, it would be perfectly fine to use that new image as long as the trademark on the logo had expired or been forfeited.

johnpettigrew on 17/8/05 3:19PM
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Castle has at least the right to use the trademark. They needed it, I think, when they took over the production of the Acorn range of desktop computers. Or are all the Castle RPC's and A7000's without the name and the nut logo?

egel on 17/8/05 4:57PM
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The old acorn logo was once on a F1 car (Arrows-BMW 1984). One of the drivers was the Belgian Thiery Boutsen.

<[link]

scl4c0rn on 17/8/05 10:49PM
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scl4c0m: That one's new to me. I knew they once sponsored a Formula 3 team, which is why Revs is an F3 simulator.

Can't imagine any RISC OS company being able to do that these days :-(

SimonC on 18/8/05 10:23AM
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SimonC: one would hope they'd have more sense these days :-)

bucksboy on 18/8/05 11:49AM
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apdl: The Nut and some other stuf is still Element 14 Limited (Who ever at the moment that is) [link] trademark=2123753

egel on 18/8/05 12:42PM
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egel: That's the specific 3D Acorn nut. not the actual Acorn Computers trade mark which was a plain 2D green acorn with the word "Acorn" in (I think) Trinity/Times Roman beside it. As you can see the reason the 3D acorn hasn't lapsed is because it wasn't registered until 1997 whereas the original mark was much older.

apdl on 18/8/05 6:13PM
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