Claus-Dieter Zink takes measures against Lowlands Cup team

Knacklappen schrieb:

I explained the situation in detail to him - in German - and he
actually agreed that probably this conflict could have been avoided if
Vertigos first mails would have been in German. Since he does not speak
English, he throws away all non-German mails as spam. =:-o

If this is true, you should forward this message to the LLC guys. That
puts CDZ's whole case into the dustbin.

Despite this, there's things that make him look bad:

Why did he have to employ a lawyer before trying to communicate, even
though the two parties don't share a common language, there's enough
Germans with fluent English that could have helped out. (maybe the
initial "unauthorized spokesperson" was such a helping hand? Wonder why
he's unauthorized now, then)

The claim that now he has to pay the legal cost and thus he doesn't
want to settle the case in a good-will scenario is, let's say, slightly
blue eyed. Giving the above quote that he probably threw away the first
e-mails that tried to get his ok to use the picture based on the fact
that he was unable to read the predominant language in international
business, I assume that a court would find that throwing away business
messages because you don't understand them is not good practice, which
will not help his case. The LLC guys have, thus, behaved correctly in
asking permission as soon as they found out that it was copyrighted
material. They should have removed it while there was no positive
feedback, however.
I firmly believe that, if this case goes to court, it will come out as
a draw with two unhappy parties and two happy lawyers.
We Germans have been known for feeding haystacks of money to the
lawyers over such stupid things as fences between neighbouring yards,
trees on those fences, cars parked in "wrong" locations etc. etc. etc.
It seems that CDZ is continuing this "good" practice by not even
considering a peaceful settlement of this case, which might be easy to
get. If he had to hire the lawyer because of his own lack of
proficiency in English, that's his problem and thus the cost he'll
have to pay. He could have gotten translator services for less money.

Finally, the claim the lawyer makes on LLC being a GbR (Gesellschaft
des bürgerlichen Rechts) is pretty dubious. While a GbR can be
constituted without a written contract to pursue basically any joint
interest, I doubt that it will hold in this case. The finer point
behind it is this: if those guys really were a GbR, they would all
jointly be liable with their private wealth (with the word wealth
probably being too big a word in this case) and thus they could go
after those that are here in Germany who themselves, as far as I
understand, were not involved in copying the picture, just because they
were members of the same legal body. Boy this smells bad. It's a trick
to avoid having to go to court in Belgium.

Oh, and finally one thing you need to know about Lawyer fees in
Germany:
There's something called the BRAGO (federal regulation for legal
attorneys fees). This lists, in detail, what a lawyer is allowed to
charge for a certain service. It does this, for most things, in
relation to the case value. If you're fighting over 200EUR, the
attorney will make much less money than when you're fighting over
10000. That's the reason why every lawyer has a vested interest in
inflating the case value to something "sensible" for his own purse.

I wish you all the best for your case!
Reno

_____________


Disclaimer: IANAL, all above is laymen's knowledge

pj

At 10:36 05 January 2006, Ronald Termaat wrote:
New update.

We tried to settle this with cdz in a friendly way.
Didn't work. We are
now facing a higher threat and going to court.
Where will this lead to? Going to prison?

When you have a calendar of cdz, and look at the nice
foto's, remember
that behind the photo is someone that seems only interested
in money
and rather bring us to court than try to find a solution.

Any help in this case would be welcome. If you know
CDZ please talk to
him and try to convince him that this is not what he
wants.

For details and all correspondence with cdz etc. see:
http://lowlands.sytes.net

Having read all I could of the correspondence on the
link I am now even more convinced that the Lowland
Cup Organisers need our support in this. On the one
hand we have an organisation CDZ whose only wish is
to make money from us, not a crime per se; and on
the other hand a group of glider pilots seeking to
provide a service to glider pilots when we cannot fly
for real at no cost to us. I know who I support. I
have e-mailed CDZ with my view and I would urge others
to do the same. Money appears to be important to him
and perhaps the potential loss of custom may bring
him to his senses.
The majority of suppliers in the gliding world do not
act as CDZ has, thankfully.

Don Johnstone wrote:

I
have e-mailed CDZ with my view and I would urge others
to do the same.

Apparently, it will be best to do this in German, if indeed he simply
deletes emails in all other languages.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

So how does one say "jackass" in german?



Larry





"Eric Greenwell" wrote in message
news
Don Johnstone wrote:

I
have e-mailed CDZ with my view and I would urge others
to do the same.

Apparently, it will be best to do this in German, if indeed he simply
deletes emails in all other languages.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

I doubt he deletes the ones addressed to his sales
address. You can do that from his site.



7:12 07 January 2006, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Don Johnstone wrote:

I
have e-mailed CDZ with my view and I would urge others
to do the same.

Apparently, it will be best to do this in German, if
indeed he simply
deletes emails in all other languages.


--
Change 'netto' to 'net' to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 10:35:17 UTC, "Ronald Termaat"
wrote:

: We tried to settle this with cdz in a friendly way. Didn't work. We are
: now facing a higher threat and going to court.

Am I right in thinking that you attempted to make contact with this
man, and that your email to him was replied to by someone claiming to
be writing on his behalf and giving you permission to do what you did?
If that reply can be proved to have been made to an email you sent
Zink, I'd have thought that would make a pretty strong case.

Ian

--

On Fri, 6 Jan 2006 22:39:12 UTC, "Doug Hoffman"
wrote:

: Too bad. But the world doesn't like a bully. In my opinion this is
: going to hurt CDZ himself the most.

Is anyone writing a report on this for Soaring, Sailplane and Gliding
and the other mags?

Ian
--

I sent my email to the address on his website. He responded to me in German.
Using one of the on-line language translators (not the best way for sure) I
could make out that he was not a happy camper and was leaving this in the
hands of his attorney.

bumper


"Eric Greenwell" wrote in message
news
Don Johnstone wrote:

I
have e-mailed CDZ with my view and I would urge others
to do the same.

Apparently, it will be best to do this in German, if indeed he simply
deletes emails in all other languages.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

At 08:06 08 January 2006, Pjakobs wrote:
Knacklappen schrieb:

a draw with two unhappy parties and two happy lawyers.
We Germans have been known for feeding haystacks of
money to the
lawyers over such stupid things as fences between neighbouring
yards,
trees on those fences, cars parked in 'wrong' locations
etc. etc. etc.
It seems that CDZ is continuing this 'good' practice
by not even
considering a peaceful settlement of this case, which
might be easy to
get.

It seems that where ever you live in the world that
we all have the same high regard for lawyers :-)

If memory serves me right (after living in the US for 18 years now),
this scheme is a time honored tradition in Germany as well as in the
US. Just try and put a product on the market that rhymes with WalMart
or Sony and wait what happens. This is just another form of ambulance
chasing that lawyers initiate to make a quick buck.
I would not be surprised if Zink had turned over this entire business
of fighting unauthorized usage of his pictures to lawyer that can't
hack it in business law or other more mainstream councel activities.
He may even have signed away his right to interfere with the
enforcement process once the lawyer determined that money might be
extracted.
A more benign point: Just because Zink doesn't speak English he should
not be considered a mindless redneck by this international and no doubt
multilingual forum.

Herb

wrote:
This is one very nasty situation. Mr. Zink should not hire any lawyers,
if he is so pathetic about his "rights" ...well, he can keep his
calendars for himself. Hopefully nobody will buy his "art". I don't
think we need people like him involved with anything related to soaring
or aviation in general. I really feel sorry for the victims of his
"business practice". Sounds to me like "sovietizing"...I wonder, maybe
Mr. Zink is behind Russia cutting natural gas supply to Europe? Just a
thought....