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Introducing the geocaching flag


DENelson83

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Well, I've just realized that the colour arrangement in my flag is also the colour arrangement in the favicon you see when you go to Google. And since Google is the #1 search engine online, and Geocaching is the sport where you're the search engine, the colour scheme seems even more appropriate.

:)

 

Yahoo isn't those colors though.

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What a cool idea!

 

I just now made my own. Don't vote on it, it's just for fun, but I thought why keep it all to myself? It's got an original "G" logo, colors need work. And I got metal in your tincture, which I deeply regret. :)

 

geoflag_kuna.jpg

 

Actually I think you hit the colors pretty close. In the Groundspeak logo the colors I see are yellow, green, blue, & orange. :)

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What a cool idea!

 

I just now made my own. Don't vote on it, it's just for fun, but I thought why keep it all to myself? It's got an original "G" logo, colors need work. And I got metal in your tincture, which I deeply regret. :)

 

geoflag_kuna.jpg

I like this one much better. Instead of the G in the rose, can you put a leatherman g in there?

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Instead of the G in the rose, can you put a leatherman g in there?

 

Something like this? This thin "g" doesn't lend itself to a cutout effect like the bold one does. I could add the extra circle to the compass rose, if the "g" isn't enough.

 

geoflag_kunaLeather.jpg

Edited by kunarion
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Of all the listed pictures, I like the first one the best.

I played with it a bit to make it more appealing to my own biased aesthetics:

4c851b76-6763-4607-a70e-5a2341506e45.jpg

(silly rules aside...)

 

Edit to add: Sorry about the crummy graphics. MS Paint is all I got to work with.

 

6705fa28-b3ff-4272-b666-070c9554c405.jpg

Either one is more along the lines of my first impression as well...not sure which one I like better...

 

I appreciate what the OP put together...but the shift from White to Color (without the black border) seemed sort of odd...visually...

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rrrrm....I don't like the small X. I'd still like to see it with black trim on all four colors and no other black lines.

 

I agree with this poster and the other one who suggested this in the first place.

 

Why follow some long forgotten rules that make the asthetics awful?

 

I am all for the white cross with black borders around all the colors.

 

Let's see that one and take a vote on it.

 

Good job otherwise. You put a lot of thought into this obviously.

A good idea really.

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gcflag-big.png

 

The proportion of this flag is the golden ratio, said to be the most beautiful ratio in the world, and that symbolizes the beautiful things you can find on a cache hunt. Each colour used on the flag is used at least once on the flag of each country of the world, symbolizing the worldwide nature of this activity, and the arrangement of the colours reflects the same arrangement in the geocaching.com logo. The black saltire symbolizes the act of homing in on a specific location, sometimes from many directions, and finding something (think "X marks the spot"), and the logo in the gold portion of the flag is the public domain geocaching logo. The black border on the yellow portion is just to satisfy the heraldic requirement "never put colour on colour, nor metal on metal".

Nice design, I like it. Are you putting this in the public domain? Or do you intend to sell related merchandise? No opinion either way, just curious.

I think Groundspeak would have issue with someone selling something for profit with their logo on it.

 

Nope, that's the good old public domain Geocaching logo. Hammered out in these same forums many years ago. They don't own the word Geocaching. Although some say they once tried. :)

 

Actually, I did a search with the USPTO and see that they do in fact have the word "Geocaching" as a REGISTERED US Trademark. That is Registration #2619174, Serial #78045228. It is registered in two different classifications -- for clothing and educational services.

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Actually, I did a search with the USPTO and see that they do in fact have the word "Geocaching" as a REGISTERED US Trademark. That is Registration #2619174, Serial #78045228. It is registered in two different classifications -- for clothing and educational services.

So does that mean you can't sell T-shirts with the word "Geocaching" on them?

 

Which search did you use? I tried http://www.uspto.gov/ and it comes up with no matches.

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Actually, I did a search with the USPTO and see that they do in fact have the word "Geocaching" as a REGISTERED US Trademark. That is Registration #2619174, Serial #78045228. It is registered in two different classifications -- for clothing and educational services.

So does that mean you can't sell T-shirts with the word "Geocaching" on them?

 

Which search did you use? I tried http://www.uspto.gov/ and it comes up with no matches.

 

There is an active trademark. It belongs to Groundspeak.

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Actually, I did a search with the USPTO and see that they do in fact have the word "Geocaching" as a REGISTERED US Trademark. That is Registration #2619174, Serial #78045228. It is registered in two different classifications -- for clothing and educational services.

So does that mean you can't sell T-shirts with the word "Geocaching" on them?

 

Which search did you use? I tried http://www.uspto.gov/ and it comes up with no matches.

 

Yes, just go to there -- select Trademarks, then the Search TM database search, then New User Form Search, then type in "Geocaching" and click Submit Query. And in the results, there will be 4 records, select the first one and click on the "TARR" field for the easiest to read results.

 

I'm not an attorney but as a "layman" who has directly filed and been awarded numerous successful trademark registrations...I would think that you can't sell t-shirts with the term. And the second class they have it in would seem to me that you can't use it on web sites that provide any information about geocaching. Which is interesting as there are like a zillion of sites that do that in conjunction with other commercial usages. If that were my trademark I'd be worried about it being invalidated based on generic usage. But again, I'm not an attorney so this is just my personal opinion. :)

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Maybe someone want to let these guys know?

 

http://shop.cafepress.com/geocaching

 

IANAL and all the TV / Holiday Inn stuff, but I think Groundspeak would have a hard time challenging usage of the word "geocaching" as a verb and not in reference to a company. Nor do I think they would, but then again, I'm the last person qualified to speak for them. In other words, my 2 cents may not even be worth that much :)

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Something like this? This thin "g" doesn't lend itself to a cutout effect like the bold one does. I could add the extra circle to the compass rose, if the "g" isn't enough.

 

geoflag_kunaLeather.jpg

I like this better than the confederate X. I do not like the X. Or maybe the original compass rose with the G in the opposite corner.

 

Maybe the white with the black outline? I wish I had one to fly at our event on Saturday.

 

Is someone saying that the word geocaching has is a trademark? :P

Edited by Knight2000
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Just FYI, I designed this flag in an infinite-resolution environment.

Erm.. meaning vector graphics?

That's right, as an SVG, using Inkscape.

 

geoflag_kunaLeather.jpg

What you might want to do to make that flag look better is put the G logo completely in the white portion of the compass rose, instead of have it protrude out to touch the coloured background.

Edited by DENelson83
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Actually, I did a search with the USPTO and see that they do in fact have the word "Geocaching" as a REGISTERED US Trademark. That is Registration #2619174, Serial #78045228. It is registered in two different classifications -- for clothing and educational services.

So does that mean you can't sell T-shirts with the word "Geocaching" on them?

 

Which search did you use? I tried http://www.uspto.gov/ and it comes up with no matches.

 

There is an active trademark. It belongs to Groundspeak.

 

That doesn't work for me, it says the search is expired. Then I can't seem to get a hit on the word Geocaching when I try to do my own search.

 

One thing I do know, the word Geocaching was invented by one guy (Matt Stum) in a Yahoo groups post a few months before this website existed. He's even given credit for it right here on Geocaching.com; and I had heard Groundspeak Inc. once did try to trademark the word, but abandoned that effort after getting flack from some of the pioneers of Geocaching on Usenet and in the aforementioned Yahoo Group. Of course they may have done it silently later.

Edited by TheWhiteUrkel
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What you might want to do to make that flag look better is put the G logo completely in the white portion of the compass rose, instead of have it protrude out to touch the coloured background.

I think so, too. My latest version kinda looks like the "G" is in a fight with Batman and Robin, "Ka-POW!!!". I'll fiddle with the sizes, and may try the compass back in black.

 

It would be great to have a little variety of flag designs to choose.

Edited by kunarion
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The link won't work. One must go to the www.uspto.gov site and resubmit the search to find things.

 

Of interest:

 

It was held but abandoned in 2004 by Morris Book Publishing for use with "printed materials, namely, books about GPS based activities"

 

Groundspeak has it now for "Clothing, namely shirts, hats, vests, jackets, [ shoes and pants ]" and "Providing on-line information for a GPS based treasure hunting game".

 

FYI: They (Groundspeak) claim first use of the term on the date August 1, 2000. Sounds like Matt Stum has an issue there if he's claiming first use before Groundspeak.

Edited by ecanderson
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The link won't work. One must go to the www.uspto.gov site and resubmit the search to find things.

 

Of interest:

 

It was held but abandoned in 2004 by Morris Book Publishing for use with "printed materials, namely, books about GPS based activities"

 

Groundspeak has it now for "Clothing, namely shirts, hats, vests, jackets, [ shoes and pants ]" and "Providing on-line information for a GPS based treasure hunting game".

 

FYI: They (Groundspeak) claim first use of the term on the date August 1, 2000. Sounds like Matt Stum has an issue there if he's claiming first use before Groundspeak.

 

Funny then how Groundspeak themselves admit it was coined on 30 May 2000 themselves in their own version of the history of Geocaching on their own website. Here is the page, along with some of the discussion on the topic. And of course you can search older and newer messages posted to the group from that page. This was actually on egroups.com which was later bought out and integrated into Yahoo Groups.

 

I'm sure Matt Stum isn't saying anything, as he's estranged from this website, just like the guy who invented Geocaching. All in the public domain, I might add. Not unlike this particular flag discussion. :mad:

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Funny then how Groundspeak themselves admit it was coined on 30 May 2000 themselves in their own version of the history of Geocaching on their own website.

I guess they'll have to argue with themselves or whomever they hired to make the TM submission with the 8/1/2000 date. The uspto doesn't make them up themselves. Given the public history, I wonder why they picked that date ... apart from the date that Jeremy picked up the ball was also 8/1/2000, wasn't it?

 

Edit: ran across an interesting take on geocaching history that explains a lot:

http://en.allexperts.com/e/d/da/dave_ulmer.htm

Edited by ecanderson
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Well, this thread sure took an interesting turn. Off topic, certainly, but fascinating to me.

 

Not really that far off topic considering all the "warnings" that Groundspeak might put the kabash on a public domain Geocaching flag. :mad:

 

So we almost seem to have two competing designs here?

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Funny then how Groundspeak themselves admit it was coined on 30 May 2000 themselves in their own version of the history of Geocaching on their own website.

I guess they'll have to argue with themselves or whomever they hired to make the TM submission with the 8/1/2000 date. The uspto doesn't make them up themselves. Given the public history, I wonder why they picked that date ... apart from the date that Jeremy picked up the ball was also 8/1/2000, wasn't it?

 

Edit: ran across an interesting take on geocaching history that explains a lot:

http://en.allexperts.com/e/d/da/dave_ulmer.htm

 

Having been down this road about 9 times myself, what I know is that you have a date you first came up with it, and a date you first used it in commerce. The date used in commerce is what is required for the USPTO trademark application.

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Do you think I could get someone to give me free passage on a cruise in exchange for spending time with paying geocachers?

 

B)

 

If I get banned for bringing this stuff up (I've seen it happen but with other factors too), I will offer a cruise with myself for paying customers to Bermuda. We'll only be able to find Terracaches and Navicaches though. :mad:

Edited by TheWhiteUrkel
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Well, this thread sure took an interesting turn. Off topic, certainly, but fascinating to me.

 

Not really that far off topic considering all the "warnings" that Groundspeak might put the kabash on a public domain Geocaching flag. :mad:

 

So we almost seem to have two competing designs here?

And 500 years from now, after centuries of sectarian bloodshed, pundits and talking heads and college professors will point to this thread as the source of the world's problems.

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I like this better than the confederate X. I do not like the X. Or maybe the original compass rose with the G in the opposite corner.

Here's a version with a cutout G.

geoflag_kunacomp1.jpg

 

I'll try a couple of ideas with the G and compass separate, too. The final one would not be so blurry. Must be a jpg compression thing.

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Do you think I could get someone to give me free passage on a cruise in exchange for spending time with paying geocachers?

 

:mad:

Maybe if you make the new flag to be adopted.

 

Is there anyone actually looking to adopt a flag design, namely Groundspeak? Or was that just said as a generality? If so, I think there are some designers here who could really do some work as far as something official goes.

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And 500 years from now, after centuries of sectarian bloodshed, pundits and talking heads and college professors will point to this thread as the source of the world's problems.

OK, that definitely belongs to the geocaching as religion thread :mad:

 

In the meantime, each group will have a flag (or 4) to gather behind as they prepare to do battle.

 

I know kunarion says not to vote on his design, but there's something about the colors and the angle of the lines that makes it very pleasing to the eyes.

 

For some reason, the compass rose with cutout G reminds me of a tortoise (yes, I know, wrong number of appendages) - and that's not necessarily a bad thing B)

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