'Silicon Harbor' origin questioned

In his State of the City address this week, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley again referred to the city as "Silicon Harbor," a moniker he said was coined by Nate DaPore, chief executive officer of human resources software developer PeopleMatter and a native Charlestonian.

But the name, its origin and any official ownership of it as intellectual property are a bit more up in the air, according to local tech businessman Peter Lucash.

Lucash, who designed a Silicon Harbor T-shirt and is selling it on his Spreadshirt.com page, said the term is hardly new and doesn't seem to be trademarked.

"It's been elsewhere in other places," he said, naming Hamburg, Germany, Camden, Maine, and Hong Kong.

PeopleMatter spokeswoman Joy Capps maintained DaPore, who was out of the country last week, did coin the term but said he wouldn't mind others using it.

"I don't think he would pick a bone with that. I think it's very cool," Capps said of Lucash's T-shirt. "It's not something that we're going to be producing."

Furthermore, Lucash noted, the Charleston Digital Corridor, a city agency, owns SiliconHarbor.com.

Lucash said he hasn't sold any of the shirts yet but pledged to donate 10 percent of any profits between now and the end of February to the nonprofit Charleston Digital Corridor Foundation.

Gildan, which has a warehouse on Clements Ferry Road, is providing the base T-shirt for the design, so it seems like everybody wins.

Reach Brendan Kearney at 937-5906.