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Its important to note that Fluke is required to enforce their trademark or they risk losing it.
Actually no, in fact it's counterproductive. That's a mindless aphorism thrown about to deflect blame from the actual people responsible for decisions, similar to "companies are legally required to maximize profit".
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I get your perspective (after checking your profile). Is Louis CK counterproductive because he doesn't grab a pitchfork and head to Congress to reform copyright law? No. He sells his videos for $5 and asks you nicely not to copy them. Some people try to fix the system. Some people try to do good within the system. Some people do both. Don't shit on someone's parade because you don't feel they didn't do enough, otherw…
It seems like you're mixing another comment of mine with what I wrote above. For what it's worth, I like Louis CK's approach - it looks like a great post-copyright business model. But your original comment is orthogonal to working within the system. Saying that companies have to "protect their trademarks or lose them" is indeed true in the strict legal sense. But a company could legally "protect" their trademark by i…
Nope. This is known as "naked licensing",and can lead to loss of the mark.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its important to note that Fluke is required to enforce their trademark or they risk losing it.
There are ways around that though. They can offer to license the trademark. Apple for example licensed the "ios" trademark from Cisco. http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco_and_apple_agreement_on_ios...
I'll bet that license has a ton of restrictions.
Given that Fluke multimeters cost about 10x what the destroyed ones are, sparkfun is still out $30k to replace the shipment + destruction fees, and now have probably 200 fluke units to try to recoup some costs with.
While this is true, Fluke's response could have easily been "eat a bag of dicks, Sparkfun" and their actual response is quite a bit more friendly than that. I think there is still blame to go around here but more on US Customs than Fluke, particularly since the Sparkfun multimeter color isn't really that close to the "Fluke yellow". It would be nice if there were some simple (via some arbiter, not the slow legal syst…
fluke multimeter: http://www.rigoloscilloscope.com.au/upload/pro/2010111106244...
sparkfun multimeter: https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/home_page_posts/1/4/2/8/DMM_...
So the end result is still an enviromentally unfriendly destruction of 2000 perfectly fine multimeters. Just because they are yellow.
If you pardon the pun, he's having a shocking suprise, if he survives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this is true, Fluke's response could have easily been "eat a bag of dicks, Sparkfun" and their actual response is quite a bit more friendly than that. I think there is still blame to go around here but more on US Customs than Fluke, particularly since the Sparkfun multimeter color isn't really that close to the "Fluke yellow". It would be nice if there were some simple (via some arbiter, not the slow legal syst…
The yellows look pretty similar fluke multimeter: http://www.rigoloscilloscope.com.au/upload/pro/2010111106244... sparkfun multimeter: https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/home_page_posts/1/4/2/8/DMM_...
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Summary of events leading to this response: SparkFun has been selling a type of inexpensive digital multimeter since 2008. About two weeks ago, they were informed that a recent shipment of 2,000 units (a $30,000 value) was seized by customs due to a trademark owned by Fluke (granted 2003). Specifically, their units violate Fluke's branding (gray face, yellow border). The Chinese manufacturer won't take them back (pro…
Its important to note that Fluke is required to enforce their trademark or they risk losing it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
which is called "trade dress" and is much more difficult for fluke to prevail on.
though they did.
Sparkfun isnt exactly in ideal position to fight Fluke, after all they very well might make a ton of money selling Fluke gear in the future. No point getting hostile over ~$20K.
Fluke received a trademark for a item design that WAS ALREADY IN USE for at least 20 years. Trademark in the center of all this is ~"dark case, yellow face". They didnt even come up with the design first. Look at the second one from the top: http://www.stevenjohnson.com/apparatusdesignco/index.html
Fluke multimeters started white/gray/beige, then went black, then yellow. Yellow on black is new to fluke.
Basically they STOLE generic, already used design and trademarked it same way one click and round corners received US Patents.
