🚀 go-pugleaf

From a recent gnu.announce article:
 > Then Apple Computer announced its intention to market a MIDI (a
 > type of musical synthesiser) bearing the its computer trademark and
 > apple logo, despite the fact that this was a contravention of its 1981
 > agreement with Apple Corps.

MIDI is NOT a type of musical synthesizer.  MIDI (Musical Instrument
Digital Interface) is a specification of a data transmission protocol,
its hardware support, and the semantics of the transmitted data.  MIDI
allows musical instruments, mixers, multitrack recorders, computers and
other devices from any number of different manufacturers to communicate.

The product that Apple is marketing is the MIDI Manager, which also is
not a type of musical synthesizer.  The MIDI Manager is a software
system that allows computer programs and MIDI-capable devices to be
interconnected via software in complex ways that are difficult or
impossible to do with MIDI cable.

Apple is not selling a musical instrument, but rather a software system that
supports interconnection of instruments, software and recording devices.
I cannot say whether this still infringes on Apple Corps' trademarks;
that is for the courts to decide.  I just wanted to point out the
misinformation and show that the case isn't as clear-cut as the quoted
article would lead you to believe.

kyle jones   <kjones@talos.pm.com>   ...!uunet!talos!kjones