Derek wrote:
> The longer this goes on, the more it looks like what REALLY ticked of
> Jim is the belief that Mike stole his idea. But since you can't
> protect an idea outside of patenting it, he's tried to claim
> copyright.
Hmm, interesting observation, you may be right.

Although I would argue that creating a printable sheet of translation
terms specifically customized to the Puerh genre is not the same "idea"
as someone reading a Tin at a supermarket. I think many of us have read
similar tins at the local ethnic stores, it is hardly a new concept.

At work I deal with foreign language translation cheat sheets all of
the time. Most published translation books don't cover technical
terms, try looking up the French/German/Italian translation of a
"spectrophotometer" or a "magnahelic", you wont find it in the
standard Larousse book. So a lot of us engineering types keep cheat
sheets of the technical terms used in our industry, they actually
become good barter material as we trade them back and forth. I have a
notebook full of them in various languages. My puerh cheat sheet was
hardly an original idea, it was inspired by these notes I use at work.
It started as a MS Word document full of notes and pictures meant for
my own personal use, after answering several emails about interpreting
puerh wrappers from people who visited my website I decided to enhance
and publish my notes. The name came naturally due to my familiarity of
various translation sites and packages, it is after quite common.

Besides, all of this "Intellectual Property" mumbo jumbo aside, why
should anyone care that I offered help to the tea community at large.
Am I taking money out of anyone's pocket? Am I hurting anyone? Am I
defaming anyone? If I wasn't so damn stubborn I would just give up
and go away like all his other victims did, it really isn't worth all
of this grief when I don't even profit from it, well, except for some
good friendships along the way.

Mike
http://www.pu-erh.net/rosetta.html