Engineer's Web takeoff isn't a pretty site, Intel says

Home page has gotten corporation's attention, and it's not sending flowers

Published: July 25, 1996 San Jose Mercury News BY JANET RAE-DUPREE Mercury News Staff Writer

It's not quite like David slinging a stone at Goliath's forehead. It's more like David gnawing on Goliath's big toe.

The problem now for the David of our tale, a research engineer in Texas named Bob Collins, is that his Goliath, Intel Corp., is thoroughly ticked.

Collins knew he'd be tweaking the Santa Clara-based chipmaking giant when he created ''Intel Secrets: What Intel Doesn't Want You To Know,'' a World Wide Web site devoted to revealing hidden technical details in Intel processors.

He named his site deliberately, to attract attention. He figured that Intel would be annoyed. But he also figured he was in the right because he would reveal only information -- such as documentation errors and omissions -- publicly available elsewhere or confirmed through his own research.

Collins says he didn't count on Intel coming after him at work, throwing lawyers at him and generally making his life miserable. Preposterous, says Intel: No one has harassed Collins. And, the company says, no one at Intel necessarily wants his Web site to go away. What Intel does want is to persuade Collins to dump his site's logo, which mimics the Intel corporate logo by reversing the ''e'' and drawing an international circle-slash symbol through it. The logo says: ''Intel Absolutely Not Inside,'' a twist on the common ''Intel Inside'' motto. ''He's tarnishing the logo, and we've spent a great deal of time and money to create a positive image for it,'' Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. ''Parody is protected as free speech when it involves an idea or a name, even a trademarked name ... but the use of a logo is not fair because that is considered art work. That's how the courts have defined it in the past.''		Intel says it doesn't mind that its site on the World Wide Web, above, is being parodied by a site, below, created by Robert Collins. The chip maker does, however, object to tampering with its logo.
'Obviously Different' Collins insists his site's logo is so obviously different from Intel's that readers must know the two are not connected. To drive home the point, Collins adds a disclaimer to his Web pages: ''Make no mistake! The Intel Secrets web site is proud to provide superior information and service without any affiliation to Intel.'' Collins, who works for Texas Instruments, was startled shortly after he first introduced his site a year ago when Texas Instruments attorneys came to his office to ask him questions about it. He said an Intel security official complained to Texas Instruments that Collins was linking directly from his Web page to pages on Intel's system, bypassing Intel's request that users register their names at Intel first.

Mulloy denied ''going after'' Collins and said the Web linking was not an issue. He said Intel attorneys contacted Texas Instruments to ensure that Collins was not using restricted Intel information that he had gotten at work.

Secrets Safe

''That was the only reason for our contact with TI,'' Mulloy said. ''We're confident that our nondisclosure agreements with Texas Instruments are not being violated by Mr. Collins.''

Still, having a corporate giant nose around his workplace was unnerving. Collins says he immediately stopped linking to Intel pages.

But he also admits that he has been practicing what a friend calls ''malicious compliance.''

''I will comply with the very letter of what they ask me to do, but I'll do it in such a malicious way that it's guaranteed to infuriate them,'' he said. ''If someone pushes me up against a wall when I don't think they have a right to, I'm going to push back.''

Alternative Trademark

He pushed back by filing for trademark protection for his site's logo. That's when Intel rolled in the big legal guns.

''We will vigorously oppose his trademark application,'' Mulloy said. ''We have an obligation to protect: ... Our logo. What he's done is the legal equivalent of spray-painting a building.''

Collins isn't sure whether he'll win the logo fight. Perhaps that's why he's throwing another whimsical raspberry at his favorite target. Four days ago he added a new feature to his home page: an image of his young son with a stylized chip over the boy's eye. It looks remarkably like the opening image on Intel's Web site of a woman's face.

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