Our ref:26777 20 MAY 1996 COLLECTION CONFUSION ==================== Vernon Systems Limited, of Auckland, New Zealand, are the developers of the museum management system called 'COLLECTION'. The system was named in 1987. Vernon Systems has been exclusively dedicated to COLLECTION for over ten years, and has almost fifty sites with hundreds of users in the US, Europe and Australasia. We are gravely concerned that recently there have emerged two competitive products which have names sufficiently similar to cause confusion with COLLECTION. Collections Inc./ Collections-Museum ------------------------------------ A company called 'Collections Inc.' based in Salt Lake City, UT, has recently launched a package called Collections-Museum [TM] (based, we understand, on a system developed for the National Cowboy Hall of Fame). At the recent Minneapolis AAM we were both exhibiting, and several people told us that they had aproached the Collections Inc. stand expecting to find Vernon Systems and COLLECTION. At the close of AAM Collections Inc. had a drawer for a free system, and the winner came to our stand to claim the prize! There have been other products with also similar names, such as 'Collection Manager', that was seen in 1989, and 'Collection Master' was announced on Museum-L in June 1995, from Jepal Inc. of Norman, OK. Vernon Systems is concerned about the confusion caused by closely similar nomenclature. There is a likelihood that the reputation (good or bad) from one product may be misascribed to another. We have raised these concerns with the companies who have chosen names close to our own, in the hope that they may alter them to be more distinctive, and we are publishing this notice to advise the museum community of this unfortunate situation. Best Wishes Bil Vernon Managing Director -- Vernon Systems Ltd. "COLLECTION - P.O. Box 6909 Is there really any better Auckland, New Zealand Collection Management System?" Ph: +(649) 302-3147 Fax: +(649) 302-3150 Email: [log in to unmask] 100033,673 (CompuServe) WWW: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vsl