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I just found out, to my great horror, that the UPA has trademarked the phrase “Spirit of the Game”. This must be the greatest oxymoron in Ultimate history!

Discraft resellers have already been told that they can not put the phrase “Spirit of the Game” on discs unless they have approval from the UPA. That is insane! Is this Ultimate? Is this the Spirit of the Game?

I have asked the UPA for clarification but so far they have failed to respond to my emails. Is this patent trademark worldwide? Can you actually do this? Take a phrase that has been used since the beginning of the sport and trademark it? What about the name Ultimate? Is the next step to trademark our game and we all pay the UPA for playing it? Or lets trademark the stall count: stall one™… stall two™… stall three™...

I can't believe this. I am shocked!
---

UPDATE: reponse from Sandie Hammerly (Executive Director UPA)

The Ultimate Players Association does own the US trademark registration on the mark “Spirit of the Game” (since 1997), as well as SOTG, Ultimate Players Association and UPA.

While I was not a part of the UPA when this process was started, I can assure you that the organization’s goal in doing this was not to keep players and organizers from using the marks, but to protect our sport and players from commercial entities and business who might acquire the mark and prevent us from using it unless a licensing fee was paid…or possibly not at all.

When organizers have asked us for permission to use the mark, to the best of my knowledge, we have never said no.

LEIOUT 2006 Photos are up on my website. Here is the direct link:

http://www.stephenchiang.com/LEIOUT06/index.htm

Enjoy!

-Stephen

Share your Beach Ultimate videos with the rest of the world... Upload them to Google video. It is free and BULA will promote the link so you don't have to:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22beach+Ultimate%22

We have maintaining our Beach Ultimate News mailing list for many years now. About a year ago ISP's started closing their SMTP servers for bulk mailings (even legitimate ones like ours) and we were forced to pay for a service that does it for us. Okay, no problem.

However that seems to be also not a great solution. Today we sent out an email about the Yes But Nau tournament in France (http://www.yesbutnau.com) and we noticed a high percentage of bounces. Emails from people I have almost daily contact with bounced.

Reason? No idea. Spam filters on the servers? When we send the bounced people emails sent through Outlook there were hardly any bounces.

Does anybody have an idea how we can send out our news to all people that want to receive it? Please comment :-)

Update: My suspicions got confirmed... The email company we use (Intellicontact) is currently on the Spamhaus blacklist because of abuse by one of their previous customers. I was assured that the problem will be fixed by the weekend.

Spam filters are not only on your PC. They are also on ISPs. They use a variety of methods. Some use grey lists, others services such as Spamhaus that keep track of what mail servers send spam and block those emails from ever even getting to the reader. Kind of scary to imagine how big my junkmail box would be without those methods...

Did you see the news? The BULA beloved Flashflight disc got an award ;-)

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=1485159

"Really Useless Product Award: Nite Ize's Illuminated Flying Disc takes the prize. Imagine a Frisbee with LEDs that costs $20. Now if it only came with a built-in MP3 player… "

—Steve Bass (PCWorld)

I am a 'techy' and love gadgets... but Steve.... have some non-tech fun too...

Flashflights are great at night. Not every night, but when you are with a bunch of friends on a beach. Couple of beers (you can still do that in Europe ;-) and a Flashflight... I think it is worth $20!

And you know what? When you layout to catch the disc in the sea (a wonderful feeling you should try some time)... the disc still works. Something you can't say about most MP3 players...

Hi;

I´m Marco and I will be in charge to organize the WCBU 2007 in Brazil, with my great friend and also president of BUA (Brazilian Ultimate assossiation) Roberto Hucke!!!

Now we are looking for the right beach to held the tournament.

I´ll be here almost everyday to update all the news...

I promisse that my english will improve during that chats.

Tanks and keep in touch!

Marco

Playing Beach Ultimate you probably found the need for some feet protection. In the winter the sand can get really cold and in the summer the sand can get really hot or, like at the Bar do Peixe tournament, sometimes the sand is really rough.

In 2004 a company called Vincere came out with Sandsocks. Although they are great to play in (I hardly feel them on my feet) they were not very sturdy and quickly got holes in them. I tried several other 'socks' made for surfing, but they are bit too heavy and clumsy to play in.

A while ago Florida native Tim Finan (who also is involved in BULA) referred me to a new brand: Sandskins (http://www.sandskins.com). What a change! The company added a thin rubber and very flexible sole, extra layers and stitching, and that made a big difference. I have been playing them for about 4 months and I still have no holes in them! These Sandskins are much better than Sandsocks. I have no affiliation with this brand, but they have my vote for the best feet protection for Beach Ultimate.

Comments about Sandskins or feet protection in general? Add them below.

Being Dutch and living in Portugal is probably not the same feeling as being a man in a woman's body but it is an interesting experience nevertheless ;-).

I grew up with Nordic Ultimate: grass, field shortages, rain, indoor season... The spirit was almost always great but when there were ever any spirit problems on the field they were dealt with more a 'rational' approach. Less 'passionate'. This is how grass Ultimate developed from the start. The first Ultimate evangelists came from the US, Canada, and Western Europe. The style of play, the way most Ultimate players behave (good and bad) is very Western, very Nordic. Intellectual hippy-jocks, someone ones told me...

Beach Ultimate will eventually have more Latino players than Nordics. It is inevitable. In Portugal we play 52 weeks a year on the beach. The lifestyle is more inviting to go to the beach and play disc. The future World Champions will come from the relatively insignificant Ultimate countries such as Spain, Italy, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico or Portugal (no offense to all the already existing great players/teams in those countries!)

How will the spirit evolve? No doubt the beach puts players in a great mood. The sea is calming, that sand feels great to walk on, and it seems the disc was made for the beach... :-) Mix in the more relaxed attitude towards life and a bit of hot Latino spirit and what will we get? Will the future spirit of Beach Ultimate be like a Mexican spicy dish? A Brazilian samba? Or more balanced Chinese sweet and sour soup with distinct Ultimate overtones?

Happy New Year you Beach Ultimate lovers! May your life be healthy and may you have lots of fun on the beach.

This year should be interesting for anyone that loves Beach Ultimate. As you can see we have launched the BULA Blog which allows us to add and share knowledge and fun easily. Tournament stories, pictures, product reviews, etc...

In addition, we are creating free material for anyone that wants to organize a Beach Ultimate tournament or league. Downloadable (and editable) posters, flyers, CD’s (based on the Lookfly Fresher CD, which they generously made available to us), and videos in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and perhaps other languages.

But it doesn’t stop there: BULA is setting up a committee to produce a sponsorship document that tournament/league organizers can download and use to attract sponsors. I know I would like a copy myself to see how we can get sponsors for the WCBU2007 ;-)

Speaking of the WCBU2007… We are starting to setup for the World Championships Beach Ultimate in Brazil that will be held in December 2007. The Brazilian FDF just finished organizing the Pan-American (grass Ultimate) Championships, and now the World Championships… Many people have already told me they wanted to go so we are hoping for at least the same turn out as in 2004 (40 teams from 22 countries) but it might very well be bigger. Singapore wants to come, I have heard some interest from Holland who was absent in 2004. It should be great…Thanks Marco and the gang for organizing this!.

If you are think of going to Perth this year for the World Ultimate Club Championship you might want to stay around for the weekend after… We are trying to organize there the next BULA BUTT there. More news later this month…

On January 10 we will be launching the beta version of the BULA SOTG system in Los Angeles at the Lei-out tournament. After we get their feedback we will make it public in February.

So as you can see, we want you to have fun playing Ultimate on the beach. This is a great sport and with help from the entire BULA group of volunteers we want to spread the fun worldwide so you can go to fun places, play hard, party hard, and make more friends :-)

I am sure we will increase the use of interesting technology on the BULA website. We already have Google Earth files of many tournaments, now a blog, and we are also looking into launching the Beach Ultimate version of Ultilinks, and who knows what else ;-)

So 2006 should be a beachy year. Keep ‘em flying!

P.S. If you would like to contribute to the BULA Blog…:-)