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>Yes, someone pointed it out to them. I don't assume MS legal has an account here and follow each of our every move. I was making reference to the tip. Based on what you wrote, I seem to understand that you mentioned that someone tipped someone at MS legal lawyer to react on that situation.
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>All I am saying is that somebody had to tip the lawyers off. I don't know who it was, how they did it, or where they reside here or within MS. I will tell you this, it was not me.
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>Unfortunately, I don't have your legal expertise. So, I prefer to let that to the proper authorities.
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>Then they should be arguing that what you are attempting to do does not cause confusion, mistake, or deception among consumers. Because we are talking trademarks, I don't think Fair Use per se comes into play. Still, I think the concept applies. It is not an esoteric topic. Do you know how many websites currently use the Fox Head logo??? Is MS legal going after them??? As an example, go to micromegasystems.com and check out the logo for FoxFire. It is plain as day that they altered the trademarked Fox head logo. If there was ever a bonafide case trademark infringment, that would be it.
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>The argument can be made that at some level, there may be some confusion of whether this is officially sanctioned by MS or part of the Fox Product? Remember, it is confusion, mistake, or deception. I think you only need to violate one of the items.
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>I don't mean to pee in MM's cobb salad here but it does make one wonder why they are allowed to do it, in a for-profit purpose, and you are not allowed to do essentially the same thing for a not-for-profit purpose.
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>So FWIW, the fact that MS legal is clamping down on what I see is a genuine not for profit effort (although I think it is misguided) - it is not fair that it was clampped down upon. There would be no confusion (because you are saying powered by, there can be no mistake of substituting the application for the base Fox product and certainly, there is no deceptive purpose.
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>When you defend a trademark, you can't pick and choose. You need to be consistient. i.e., you can't go after some folks and not after some other folks. Otherwise, you run the risk of ceding rights to the public domain. Why do you think Fox Entertainment goes nuts on sites that allow you to access simpsons and king of the hill sound bytes?
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>My thoery is that somebody wanted to see this one thing fail. The best way was to sick the lawyers on you with a cease and desist letter. It is a scare tactic. The interesting thing is that you are in Canada. Did you get a letter from MS in WA or MS Canada? Jurisdictionally, I don't know how it would play out. My guess is that Canada gets jurisdiction and respects USA law. NAFTA might make a difference. There are no international protections in the US copyright statutes...
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>IMO, MS has been pretty sloppy in the way it goes about enforcing its ownership rights of the Fox Head Logo and the Visual FoxPro name and other intellecutal property rights. As another example, check out visualbasic.com, visualbasic.net, visualfoxpro.com, etc. VisualBasic.NET might be the most aggregious example of intellectual property theft.
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>My point, these items are WAY bigger on the radar screen than your little powered by visual foxpro deal. Why are you getting picked on and these other examples are allowed to go merrily along.
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>These are the arguments I would have made....

Even with the arguments do you think that there's a possibility to come on top with MS.

If it would be only a VFP thing then it could be interesting to fight over the logo for a while but when your business (UT) is in the process of getting established as a primary help center (for .Net) then you have to go after the bigger fish.

So we will forget about that logo thing like MS tries to have developers outside the established VFP base forget that VFP exists.