- Despite all the joking around about the Outdoor Retailer Trade Show there were a few cool products unveiled at the show. Probably the most intriguing thing I’ve seen so far is the upcoming Red River Gorge iPhone App from Wolverine Publishing. Coinciding with an upcoming release of a 3rd edition of the Red River Gorge guidebook, the iPhone app looks to be a fully functional guide that you can take with you right on your phone. The possibilities for something like this are pretty amazing so I can’t wait to see the finished product. You can read a bit more about it at Western Colorado Climbing.
- Iker Pou did the 2nd ascent of Chris Sharma’s Demencia Senil (5.15a) at Margalef, Spain. Pou is no stranger to the type of hard pocket pulling needed on Demencia Senil as he is well known for his early repeat of Wolfgang Gullich’s finger tweaking testpiece Action Direct (5.14d) back in 2000. Here’s a video of Pou doing a neighboring route at Margalef, Llamps y trons (5.14c):
- For all the props Chris Sharma gets for his First Ascents of super hard sport routes, he also deserves credit for bolting a lot of these new lines as well. Lately, he seems to be one of the few top climbers that actually bolts his own projects. In that vein, he bolted a new 50m line at Oliana dubbed Chaxiraxi (after their dog?) that could be one of the hardest routes in the sector according to Daila Ojeda’s blog:
This place is wonderful and the lines are five stars of course! and now also Oliana has a new line of 50 meters bolted by Chris the last week… the name is Chaxiraxi and it can be one of the hardest route in the sector… 9b?? We will see that the machine says.. If it’s like this Chris has bolted four 9b routes in Catalunya Golpe de Estado 9b in Siurana, Neanderthal 9b inSanta Linya, First round First minute 9b project in Margalef and Chaxiraxi 9b project in Oliana. And with this line Chris has bolted in Oliana 10 routes. Looks like Chris doesn’t want just to send the hard routes, he want to create it too.
- Finnish bouldering powerhouse Nalle Hukkataival has done his first 5.14c, Duele la realidad, in Oliana, Spain
- Also in Oliana, Jon Cardwell and Dave Graham both recently dispatched the 5.14b Identifacation y placas
- Desert Rat Productions has been hard at work on a guidebook for Moe’s Valley, a small bouldering area near St. George, UT. Check out their website for a free preview of the guide. They hope to have it ready by early Spring.
- If you live in the Ft. Collins, CO area Pat Ament’s The Disciples of Gill will be featured tonight at CSU. The movie is being shown in the Clark A Building Room 103 and it starts at 7pm. Tickets are $10.
- Renan Ozturk and Cory Richards completed the first ascent of a new line on Tawoche, a 21,000’+ peak in Nepal. Throughout their trip they somehow found the time, energy and internet connection to put together some pretty amazing video dispatches. The final dispatch is below and the others can be seen here.
TAWOCHE 2k10 dispatches #5 from renan ozturk on Vimeo.
- It’s cool to see companies like The North Face supporting projects like the one Ozturk and Richards just completed, however it’s not cool to see them doing things like this.
I’m pretty sure that if a company fails to defend its trademark it can lose the right to do so. Yeah, it sucks that something silly like the South Butt would come under fire, but TNF kind of has to respond (at least if they want to prevent others from borrowing/ripping off their trademark in the future).
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The South Butt appears to be a blatant rip off of The North Face. After all they are a company and protecting their brand is of high importance. I agree with the above poster that TNF basically has to fight this in court.
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I’m inclined to agree with both of you. It seems a bit naive for the South Butt to try and pretend they aren’t copying TNF. That said, in today’s hyper-connected MyTwitFace society TNF’s attempt to protect their brand has only raised TSB’s profile 1000x what it was otherwise. Right or wrong it hurts TNF’s image when they seem like a bully in this case.
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The iPhone app is a great idea and addition to the guidebook armory. Right now I’ve been scanning and converting stuff to PDF format then saving it on a PDF reader in my iPod. Sounds like this is much more advanced. Can’t wait. I hope Wolverine does this with all their guidebooks and that others follow suit. ce
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It’s a curious trademark. I talked with my lawyer(ski partner). I’ve been going through trademark issues which he has been helping me through. His take on it that case was that the North Face took the nuclear approach. They dropped a huge bomb, when there were more subtle approaches to take. The standard too is that no one is going to knowingly mistake the South Butt for the North Face. It’s seems that The North Face chose to send a message to the community by picking the most ridiculous instance — the one that was certain to garner a bunch of publicity.
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That’s interesting. So your lawyer/ski buddy’s take boils down to: TNF is working under the “no such thing as bad press” theory? Seems kinda risky, no? Bad press spreads much faster and farther these days.
I think you also mean knowingly “cause confusion, or… cause mistake”, in which case The South Butt is totally safe. I mean, the point of TSB is that it refers to/plays off TNF but quite explicitly isn’t TNF. But I don’t know the law well enough to really say for sure.
Either way, I’m less convinced now that TNF had to take action here.
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Well, for instance there is a company up in the Northwest that makes shirts/jackets/hoodies with the North Face Logo but with the word North West where North Face would be. They sell at all the cool ski shop and they aren’t some teenager — but an actual apparel line up here. That would seem like a much better target and much more of a legit complaint. Trademark law is trademark. The North Face certainly has a point either way and a right to protect its brand, but who they went picking on is curious to me. I’m sure the other apparel company took notice of the South Butt lawsuit — the north face only had to hire there lawyers once. Would a teenager from MO have paid attention to a case against the Seattle apparel company…probably not. Maybe it’s a kill a bunch of birds with one really awkward stone.
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Wait, I’m confused.
I thought the recent Supreme Court decision regarding corporations as it relates to their free-speech rights as “citizens” makes The South Butt’s existence legit. If corporations have the same rights as individuals with regards to 1st Amendment rights, and individuals can have similar names to one another, wouldn’t the logical extension to this argument be that corporations can co-exist with similar names and appearances?
Ok, so it’s not the strongest argument, but WTF, anyway. Worst Supreme Court decision in the last 100 years. Period.
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Regardless of the SCOTUS decision businesses still have copyrights and trademarks. TNF may be able to make a case that since TSB’s brand positioning is so similar to its own that it violates these rights. I think this is a situation of TNF wanting to nip a problem in the bud before it turns into a potentially bigger issue down the road.
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I had heard of this controversy through the interwebs, but never really saw any South Butt clothes around, or heard anyone really talking about. Then I visited my sister in suburban St. Louis, and saw South Butt clothes everywhere. My 11 year old niece knew everything about it, as it is apparently very popular apparel for teens and pre-teens in the area. Weird.
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Perfect example of this…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
And t-shirt ordered. TNF makes some good stuff, but they are overdue for some fun being poked at them after a whole generation of every kid on campus wearing a Denali fleece.
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Iker climbs like an American!
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@Andy: Worse than Kelo v. City of New London?
But I agree, it’s pretty @#$%ing bad.
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Moncler jacket offers men and womenmoncler discount
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