Subject: Re: Returned mail: see transcript for details

From: Thor Simon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 18:07:22 -0500

I wrote:

> The USPTO records available online show an *abandoned application for*
> a plain-text mark "SSH" and a *stylized text* mark "ssh".  I have
> confirmed this with legal counsel.  Are you saying that the USPTO is
> in error about the status of your mark?  I believe you'd need to take

A correction: I cannot find any details on an abandoned application at
this time in any USPTO search engine available to me, and my attorney
did not, evidently, find such details yesterday.  Remarkably, a co-worker
*did* manage to pull up such a record from a USPTO web site this morning,
but we cannot reproduce those search results.  Bizarre.

However, it is absolutely, positively the case that the record for the
"ssh" mark is a *stylized text* mark.  So I'd still like to know just
what's going on here -- please, someone persuade me that this isn't just
not just an attempt to blackmail an entire working group, but one engaged
in upon the basis of nonfactual information snuck into the drafts.  Sadly,
that is really what it looks like to me.

I would like to be mistaken about this.  I respect Tatu's work and I do
not want to think that he would be responsible for this kind of deception.
Please, someone explain to me how and why I am being an idiot.

If not, let's get that text removed, please; the parties involved in
other aspects of this rather frustrating debacle can clearly handle
them outside this forum, but that text doesn't belong in the standards,
doubly so if it's just plain false, and that *is* germane here.

Thor