23 March, 2008
Mary Bomar, Director
National Park Service
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240
In the spring of 2004, I created panoramic photos from the tower on Clingman’s Dome. I then identified around 125 peaks that are viewable from the tower on Clingman’s Dome. I sent copies on my panoramic photos with the peaks identified to the headquarters of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Gatlinburg, TN in 2004. I also personally gave copies of these views to NPS personnel at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center along with large topo maps covering the peaks that I had identified in 2004. In the spring of 2007, I visited the tower on Clingman’s Dome and took photos of the new panels identifying the peaks from Clingman’s Dome. Recently I found my original photographs of the NPS panels that were on the tower on Clingman's Dome in 2004. I then compared the photos of the old panels, my views and the photos of the current panels on Clingman's Dome. After this comparison, I suspect that NPS personnel at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have blatantly plagiarized my work.
I have included a copy of my Clingman’s Dome web page. You will see my documentation of most of the peaks that NPS identified on the old and/or new panels on Clingman’s Dome. I carefully worded the contents of this web page but I will try to better explain why I contend that the NPS personnel at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have plagiarized my work at Clingman’s Dome.
First, the peaks that were misidentified on the old panels on Clingman’s Dome and my work shows that these peaks were misidentified. After reviewing the photos of the panels that were on the tower in 2004, I found that every peak that my work showed were misidentified were either corrected to the peak that I identified on the current panels or not included on the current panels. The NPS personnel at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park did a very good job of checking my work against the old panels. Now the peaks that were not included on the current panels are not a plagiarism problem. But the peaks that my work showed were misidentified on the old panels were not only changed on the current panels but also changed to agree with my work.
Second, there are the peaks that were misidentified on the old panels but my work does not explicitly show were misidentified because my work does not identify those peaks. All of those peaks that were on the old panels and are on the current panels are still misidentified. Now these peaks per se are not a plagiarism problem but it does indicate that the NPS personnel at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were using my work to determine which peaks were correctly identified and which peaks were not correctly identified.
Third, there are the new peaks that are on the current panels that were not on the old panels. All of those peaks are in my work and could be plagiarism problems.
Now the NPS personnel at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park knew of my work and had my work because I gave them copies of my views in 2004. And they also know that I did this work prior to the current panels displayed on Clingman’s Dome. As I understand the copyright laws of the United States concerning intellectual property, it will be the burden of the NPS to show that NPS did not plagiarize my work. NPS will need to show conclusively that they did correctly identify the peaks in question before the panels were displayed on Clingman’s Dome without plagiarizing my work. Just getting the direction right does not conclusively prove that you have correctly identified a peak. In my case using USGS digital elevation data, I not only get the coordinates of the various peaks on a projection but also the direction, distance and elevation of the projected peak. So I feel that I can conclusively prove that I have identified a peak on my projection and then locate that peak on my panoramic photo.
Let me know if you want some time to look into my allegations of plagiarism. Otherwise I plan to pursue my rights under the copyright laws of the United States. You may also want to check with your legal department to see if they want to try to defend this case in a court of law.
Ken Gauger MasterViews
http://masterviews.home.att.net