The Tobermory Cat-Troll

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Over on Nicola's blog, he's still asserting that he has the trademark, despite clear evidence from the IPO site to the contrary, and wants to 'settle' with the publisher. It's really kind of sad. Or it would be if, as Torgo mentioned already, he hadn't taken to cyber-bullying and wreaking havoc on a perfectly innocent party.

He not only doesn't have the trademark, it's about fifteen minutes work to ascertain that there have been numerous references to Tobermory cats even before Saki, and that they typically refer to large semi-feral ginger toms.

There were even cookies made in the shape of a ginger cat and sold in a decorated tin on Tobermory as Tobermory Cat Shortbread.

I am told by a friend that "the Tobermory cat" problem in the context of numerous fertile semi-feral cats has been addressed at council meetings in Tobermory.

In other words, Mr. Stewart doesn't meet the basic requirement of unique or a priori.

Moreover, Ms. Gliori has an actual character, and a story. And art work that she created.

I note that Mr. Stewart's photographs do not all appear to be of the same cat, taken with the same camera, or in some instances based on the metatdata in the image, on the island of Mull.

His viciousness and attempt to restrain trade, his web-stalking and trolling, and what looks to me like blatant attempts at extortion speak volumes about his character.

He is engaging in deliberate acts of malice.
 

evilrooster

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A 2.5% PP royalty when you haven't written or illustrated the book certainly is excessive. An author or illustrator on a picture book could expect to share 10% PR.

To be fair, he has said he wants the money to go to the improvement of the community in Mull. But I'm not sure how that intention squares with this comment:

I feel I have a right to earn a living, and for adaptions of my work. I have heard of writers being paid in such situations – but not with me.


And I do have a problem with his use of decently and reasonably here:

I feel I should be allowed to defend my work, robustly, decently, reasonably, without being accused of being a troll – whatever that may be.
What notion of decency and reason encompasses whispering campaigns, weird passive-aggressive tweets to libraries Gliori was visiting, and the unleashing of the Facebook minions (or, if that was unintentional, silence in the face of their misbehavior)?
 

Torgo

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This is like the question," when did you stop beating your wife". By asking the question you give substance to it. Never. I ask questions and seek answers. Please be reasonable.

No, it really isn't "have you stopped beating your wife." When someone asks, "did you encourage people to troll this person" you can easily and unambiguously answer "no". The unfair form of that question would of course be "have you stopped trolling her." Not the same thing at all.

In fact, every single one of James' questions can be answered without the least bit ambiguity. He 'asks questions and seeks answers', and you're the person who is looking unreasonable here, I'm afraid.

Did you post on Facebook that Debi Gliori is a thief, or words to that effect? If the answer's "no", then you can just say that, you know.
 

RedWombat

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This is like the question," when did you stop beating your wife". By asking the question you give substance to it. Never. I ask questions and seek answers. Please be reasonable.

Here's a question that I would like an answer to, that hopefully you will find reasonable enough to address:

Do you believe that it is possible for someone to learn about the Tobermory Cat--the actual cat that hangs out in Tobermory--without you or your work being the source?
 

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Hi, :)

Does anyone know where I can get at least eighteen ideas for free?

The last delivery of at least eighteen ideas for free didn't make it. :(

In going with the theme:

1. Ginger cats from space.
2. A ginger tom with a fetish for jogger's toes.
3. The romance between a ginger tom from Scotland and a queen from England during the time of William Wallace.
4. A ginger tom trying to outsmart a catch-and-release neuter program.
5. A ginger tom trying to sue a human for using his image without permission...
6. A ginger tom who turns gray and the inner turmoil he feels.
7. A ginger tom trying to travel the world but constantly being returned to a Scottish town within 24 hours.
8. The rivalry between two brothers trying to claim the title of the Tobermory Cat.
9. The uprising of the ginger toms (Alfred Hitchcock's Birds style).
10. Purrride and Purrrrejudice.
11. The town is over-run as on December 12th all the former ginger toms rise from their graves.
12. A group of mice and rats join together to get revenge on a ginger tom.
13. The conspiracy. There is only one cat, who occasionally fakes his own death so people don't realize that he is immortal.
14. The story of a ginger tom sent to Scotland as a spy (Number 5 in http://www.cracked.com/article_17112_7-insane-military-attempts-to-weaponize-animals.html) but grows to love the town.
15. An unlikely love story between two ginger toms struggling with growing up gay in rural Scotland.
16. The ginger tom gets fed up with everything and goes to New York to become a singer.
17. The ginger tom finds a love of classical music and torments everyone by trying to sing along.
18. Cats with guns.
 

Sheryl Nantus

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Please be reasonable.


Let me give you some advice for free.

The people on this forum are not idiots. They are not going to be taken in by hyperbole and frothing-at-the-mouth statements and twisting of facts. They have worked in the publishing industry for longer that you've probably been alive and know more than you will ever know about copyright and publishing and how things work.

Save your cute one-liners for your FB groupies. It's not going to work here.
 

Ketzel

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I'd like, if I may, to clarify one technical point of the law, which has an effect on this situation. It's this: There is a fundamental difference in purpose between copyright/patent protection and trademark protection.

Copyright/patent protection gives the rights to exploit a work to the person who had the creativity and ability to actually create the work.The public purpose behind the law is to encourage creativity by ensuring that the creator gets all the benefit of his/her creative effort (at least for a defined time period) This protection is especially important in situations where the work itself could be easily reproduced and sold by others with no connection to its creation, or where the creator of the work bore large expenses in developing the work and should be allowed to recoup those expenses. Otherwise, the creator bears the all the expense of developing the work, only to have competitors rush in to produce the finished product minus the development costs, and can therefore undercut the pricing of the original creator.
So, the public purpose behind the copyright/patent laws is accomplished by protecting the creative expression.

But trademark law has a very different purpose. The purpose of trademark law is to protect the buying public, not the rights of the creator of the work the trademark is attached to. A trademark is valuable to a business, of course. It's the embodiment of its reputation and good will in the marketplace. But as far as the law is concerned, the public purpose behind the protection is based on the way the public views the mark.

If the buying public can look at a trademark and understand correctly who is actually selling the item, the purpose of the law has been accomplished. It's not intended to protect the profits of the trademark holder, although it has that effect, which is why businesses register and protect their trademarks. It's intended to protect the consumer in the marketplace from spending money on knock-offs and counterfeits when they meant to buy the genuine article.

So, if I open a shop in my town and start selling Tobermory Cat gourmet sandwiches, even if Mr. Stewart has succeeded in registering the mark "Tobermory Cat" in the US, I have not infringed his trademark. And that is because there is no possibility he will be able to persuade a court that the buying public has been confused by the name into believing that Mr. Stewart is involved in selling the food and (even more important to the claim) that the public was persuaded to buy the food because of the erroneous belief.

Even in the unlikely event that Mr. Stewart obtains the trademark of Tobermory Cats in connection with children's books, that DOES NOT prevent Ms. Gliori from using the term as a title for the books and DOES NOT prevent her from using the concept as the basis for her books. As long as the public is not being confused and misled into buying Ms. Gliori's children's book when it really intended to buy Mr. Stewart's, there is no trademark infringement. And I believe Mr. Stewart hasn't even written a children's book at this point, right?

{Usual disclaimer - my opinion only, not intended as legal advice to any person}
 
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Stacia Kane

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This is like the question," when did you stop beating your wife".

No, it isn't, and it's been explained to you why it isn't, though I honestly cannot see why such an explanation would be necessary to a thinking adult.

By asking the question you give substance to it. Never. I ask questions and seek answers. Please be reasonable.

We have also asked questions. We are also seeking answers. There is nothing unreasonable in our doing so. There is something a tad unreasonable in your joining our discussion of your own volition and then refusing to answer the questions put to you.

Furthermore, I would like to know what your definition of "reasonable" is, since none of us have apparently called libraries or engaged in smear campaigns on Facebook and Twitter against a woman who's done nothing wrong. If such behavior counts as "reasonable," then I fail to see how our discussion here--which is in fact reasonable in the extreme--would bother you at all.

The concept of the cat existed before your Facebook page. The cat was (the cats were, actually, since the concept has existed for years) famous before your Facebook page. You do not own the cat. You do not own the idea of the Tobermory cat. The idea itself is not--as you have basically admitted here, and as other people from Tobermory/Mull have stated more than once--your original creative work.

You do not have a case. No one has stolen anything from you. You can throw all the tantrums you want and shout "thief!" until the end of time, but the fact remains that no one has stolen anything from you. The fact also remains that had you responded to the publisher's attempt to be kind to you and give you some publicity in exchange for absolutely nothing, you'd be making money now, instead of beating a dead horse and making yourself look ridiculous and unpleasant.
 

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In going with the theme:

7. A ginger tom trying to travel the world but constantly being returned to a Scottish town within 24 hours.

I want this one! Which of course doesn't prevent anyone else using it. :)

Look at him. Doesn't he look like he wants to travel? Altho he's not a tom any more, poor boy.
 

James D. Macdonald

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This is like the question," when did you stop beating your wife". By asking the question you give substance to it. Never. I ask questions and seek answers. Please be reasonable.

No. Answer the questions. They're all simple and reasonable, and most of them have simple yes/no answers. The questions on the order of "what is your understanding of the term [X]" will be a bit longer, but are still simple and reasonable.

Take them one at a time, Mr. Stewart: 1) Did you, or persons encouraged by you, post on Facebook that Ms. Gliori is a thief, or words to that effect? Yes or no are the possible answers. Which is it?

As to your questions to which you are seeking answers, there seem to be two: Have you been wronged, and what are you owed? You seem to think that the answers are Yes, and 2.5% of gross income. The real answers are No, and Nothing.

As to the hypothetical that you apparently asked over on Nicola's blog: Suppose you were to write and illustrate a book called The Mousehole Cat. Could you legally and ethically do so, given that there is already at least one book by that title (and a film based on that book)?

The answer is yes, you could.

Could you use the characters Tom Bawcock, a fisherman, Mowzer, his cat, and the story that Tom and Mowzer went out to sea in a storm and hauled in enough fish to save the town of Mousehole from starvation?

Yes, you could, because those are all historical people, and the outline of the story is a historical event (which is celebrated in Mousehole, Cornwall, every year with a parade, a festival, and a display of lights).

Anyone could write such a book. If two or three or a dozen different writers did, they would have two or three or a dozen unique, non-infringing works.

If two or three or a dozen writers chose to write books called The Tobermory Cat, there were would be two or three or a dozen unique, non-infringing works.

You don't have a case.

And you don't have an excuse for the campaign you've been waging against Ms. Gliori.

Come to your senses, man! Call off the dogs! Think what you're doing to your soul.
 
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Bicyclefish

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I realized today the Tobermory Cat fellow didn't plan to create a children's book until after this dispute began. He is well within his right to do so. However, it strikes me as an example of the pot calling the kettle black.

December 16, 2011 - For commercial reasons T.C. Management really doesn't want to go anywhere near Balamory – we preferring to work amongst the more playful adult demographic and don't want our creation dragging off to play school.

March 24, 2012 - our Tobermory Cat card collection was launched today. Next we intend to produce a children's book based on the ginger tom cat character and stories we have created. Fun fun fun.
 

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Now Draco, sweetheart, you can any of them. As can anyone else.


Also....ginger cats on a plane....well damn if that's not the best one too. :)
 

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As to the hypothetical that you apparently asked over on Nicole's blog: Suppose you were to write and illustrate a book called The Mousehole Cat. Could you legally and ethically do so, given that there is already at least one book by that title (and a film based on that book)?

The answer is yes, you could.

Yes. This occurred to me, as well. There might be a complication if anyone has registered the trademark THE MOUSEHOLE CAT, of course, because then you might have to pick a different title, so - oh, hang on. It's easy to look that up. Click, click. Nobody has, not Antonia Barber, not Nicola Bayley, nobody. And of course as we know it's based on an old Cornish legend; nobody owns that story; knock yourself out, anyone who fancies a slice of that star-gazy pie!

I'm off to sue JK Rowling for writing Harry Potter before I could be bothered to get round to it.
 

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Tobermory Cat said "I feel I have a right to earn a living, and for adaptions of my work. I have heard of writers being paid in such situations – but not with me."

As I've dealt with other aspects of this story on my blog today and as others here have done so here, let me just tackle this short quote and its several errors, in my view.

1. I don't believe anyone has a right to earn a living. I'm a substantially published writer but I don't manage to earn a living from it. I'd like to. But I don't. I would need to write particular sort of books if I were to earn a living.

2. Debi Gliori's book is not an adaptation of your work, for reasons already given.

3. And I doubt you have heard of writers being paid in "such situations". You have heard of writers being paid for the use of extracts from their books, as has happened to me, but this is not what is happening here, as no one has used extracts from your book (which, I understand, wasn't written or published when Debi wrote hers.)

Please, please trust us here. People on this forum do know what they are talking about and have lots of experience. Trying to help!
 

James D. Macdonald

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Given the notoriety of his bad behavior good luck to him in finding a legitimate publisher for his children's book.

The POD presses have notoriously bad color reproduction of interior art, and incredibly high prices, leading to very low sales.

Which leaves self-publishing by hiring an offset printer, which has high initial costs, real difficulties with distribution, sales, and marketing, and a strong probability of losing a substantial amount of money.

Bottom line: This guy has screwed the pooch, and done it by his own efforts.
 

Ketzel

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There might be a complication if anyone has registered the trademark THE MOUSEHOLE CAT, of course, because then you might have to pick a different title, so -

Sigh.
Ketzel goes back to composing boring and unreadable posts.

:)
 

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Tobermory Cat's book is available here,

http://www.tobermorycat.co.uk/

It would appear to be a collection of photographs and FB posts, entirely different to Ms. Gliori's.

There is also this statement of intent:

Tobermory Cat was created as an evolving interactive artwork on facebook. The artwork is about the creation of celebrity cats. When the cat has becoming famous for being famous, we intend to exploit the cats celebrity by creating playful celebrity merchandise and merchandising, product placement and endorsements etc. We are engaged in creating the worlds first famous for being famous cat. There is no other reason for this cats fame except our work.

TC - I would dispute the final sentence, (emphasis is mine) for all the reasons (including Saki) already cited above. Your saying so does not make it so.

You did not create the cat. You did not create the legend of a Tobermory cat. You can not have copyright on the idea of a famous ginger cat living in Tobermory. You do not appear to have any trademark. You did not write or illustrate Ms. Gliori's book. How are you entitled to any of the proceeds?

I can't fathom what your claim is here. It seems to boil down to the fact that you wanted to make some money out of a marketing campaign based on an FB page, and you haven't been successful yet. How has this got anything to do with anybody else's book?

In previous posts, you have referenced "car surfing" as an example of how your ideas have been duplicated. Are you referring to pictures of the cat sitting on the car? If so, I'm afraid I may have some more bad news for you.
 

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Tobermory Cat was created as an evolving interactive artwork on facebook. The artwork is about the creation of celebrity cats. When the cat has becoming famous for being famous, we intend to exploit the cats celebrity by creating playful celebrity merchandise and merchandising, product placement and endorsements etc. We are engaged in creating the worlds first famous for being famous cat. There is no other reason for this cats fame except our work.


What did those poor apostrophes ever do to you?
 

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From Tobermory

Hi, I'm Duncan. I'm posting here because I'm the book seller mentioned earlier in this Tobermory Cat thread.
I have known Gus, who created the Tobermory Cat face book page for many years. He is a well known local artist. I consider the publisher, Hugh, a good friend. He is a wonderful supporter of books on the Islands of Scotland. I have met, spoken and emailed Debi. She is a very lovely and gentle person.
I do not visit the Tobermory Cat facebook page and never have. I made this decision as soon as I realised there was a conflict. I then could not be accused of stealing any work or ideas.
This may sound laughable but I am going to talk about the real cat. Gus has a facebook page created from three cats. One of these cats is a 'ballsy' cat. The cat came to attention in the town a few years ago. For example; we clean the beach with big machines. The moment the work was finished the cat came to lie in middle of the beach. A crowd gathered to point and laugh at this. I took photos of this almost a year before the facebook page. Anecdotes are shared around the town. They were digging the road. The cat got up in the seat beside the driver as the digging was going on. I was there. I saw this. This is very crowd gathering behavior. The cat would visit my shop. As we are a book shop we would shoo it away! A few days ago Debi’s Tobermory Cat books arrived. I got a phone call from a member of staff to come to the shop. After nine months away cat had returned and was sleeping in one of the empty book boxes. Again I took photos. Look I’m not daft enough to think there is any thing spooky about this but it is a fun cat. Since the very early days the publisher and I have been chatting about this behavior. Wherever the cat is it draws a cluster of tourists taking photos. This was meant to be a fun project to help draw people to Tobermory in very tough times. The whole plot of Debi’s story is getting tourists to return to Tobermory. We didn’t steal any of the celebrity idea. Our interest predates the facebook page. The cat is a local celebrity. The face book page, when it arrived, increased and broadened the appeal of the cat.
When the idea of the book came up it was I who suggested that Debi and Hugh meet Gus. I had seen Gus taking many photos of the cat. I met with Gus to set this up. He told me about his facebook page. I then suggested to Hugh and Debi that Gus could have a mention in the book to direct all readers to his site to see photos of the real cat, buy postcards and so on. He would be the point of contact for the real cat. To me the opportunities for Gus appeared endless. I thought it was a perfect fit. And that was my mistake.
The treatment of Debi is inexcusable. I have no words.
I very much regret that we were unable to all work together in this very distressing affair.
 
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