Mission and Goals
The main mission of CPA Virtual is to have fun simulating
our favorite airline Cathay Pacific in the wonderful
virtual world of flight simulation. We are fans of
Cathay Pacific, its great fleet and the wonderful
city of Hong Kong. Our goal is to meet many other
simmers and aviation buffs who share this passion. We hope
that CPA Virtual will be a place to meet real
pilots, flightsimmers and real aviation buffs, make friends from all
around the world and share our trials and tribulations
within Flight Simulator.
History
CPA Virtual formerly known as Cathay Pacific Virtual (CPV)
was founded May 28 of 2000. It was a short-lived
venture and was closed the 22nd of October of 2000. There was a
dispute with the real Cathay Pacific over "Trademark
Infringement and Passing Off of Cathay Pacific’s trade
mark." To the outrage
of over 200 members, CPV
had to cease and desist or face the wrath of our
favorite airline (FYI there
was also a dispute over the domain name www.cathaypacificvirtual.com).
A few months later another courageous group with the supposed
approval of Cathay Pacific launched a new version of CPV. This effort lasted only a few of months after Cathay
Pacific withdrew their approval and ordered them to close. The new CPV website was
a complete rip-off of the real airline website and was deemed
too confusing for potential customers surfing the web.
What's different about CPA
Virtual? The name Cathay Pacific Airways is
not displayed prominently anywhere on this website. You will not see the Cathay Pacific "Brush
Wing" logo on this web site (except for
screenshots and airplane photos) or any material from the Cathay Pacific website. The website design and colors are very different from
Cathay Pacific's website to avoid issues with trade dress
rights. A .com domain was deemed inappropriate
since it is associated with profit businesses. We chose
a non-profit .org domain name in case there
might be any domain name dispute:
www.cpavirtual.org. All this was done so that we could
not be accused
of passing off a trademark. We've had the term "CPA"
professionally searched for current international
trademark registration and it came out null. This has
been done so that the average Joe would find it very
difficult to confuse this website with the Cathay
website. We
are confident that our favourite airline has no basis to
order us to shut down again.
Once again in 2004 Cathay Pacific chose
to send us a cease and desist letter ordering us to shut down our
website and pay damages.
We had enough of this nonsense so we
hired our own law firm and responded in a forceful manner that they had
no legal basis to threaten us and order us to shut down. We actually
understand the law, we have the resources to defend our rights and we consider this matter
closed.
Cathay Pacific Virtual will not be intimidated by hollow
threats, even by one of our favorite airlines. Some real world
airlines respect the flight simulation hobby while others choose to
bully virtual airlines and flightsim fan clubs. It is unfortunate that one of the very
best airlines in the world chose to threaten their biggest fans & loyal
customers.
2004 Cease and Desist letter:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/trademark/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1336
Our response:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/responses/notice.cgi?NoticeID=2118
