11–20 of 26 posts
now that Sparc mention it... SparkFun does sound like SparcFun, Let's hope the two parties can resolve this amicably. Choosing a domain name/brand is so damn hard. You can think you're in the clear and years later an established company can realise or assert there's a conflict.
Maybe we should start a grassroots campaign to insist that SPARC is pronounced "sparsee".
Another case of trademark trolling: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8810200
Firefox thinks sparc.org is an "attack site": http://i36.tinypic.com/f2trth.png
By the way sparc.com appears to be done right now. Its probably DDOSed by all the people complaining.
Not cool. I realize that companies feel like they have to protect their trademark, even in borderline cases. However, this seems like a boneheaded move for SPARC. People using SparkFun tend to be young techies, the kind of people who might go on to become the hardware purchasing decision makers in larger companies.
By the way, don't go to sparc(dot)org as linked to in the post. It is a malware/attack site. I think the intended link was sparc.com
Not cool. I realize that companies feel like they have to protect their trademark, even in borderline cases. However, this seems like a boneheaded move for SPARC. People using SparkFun tend to be young techies, the kind of people who might go on to become the hardware purchasing decision makers in larger companies.
I appreciate SparkFun's response to the issue. I feel that it is very personal and down-to-earth. SparkFun is doing the right thing by telling their customers and the rest of the world about this pressure from SPARC. I'm sure that their loyal customer base will respond as well. The post writer even encourages them to email SPARC about the issue. By the way, don't go to sparc(dot)org as linked to in the post. It is a…
I think the SparkFun team is going to lose this one.
The bad new is that sparkfun is still going to lose even if they get to keep sparkfun.com. When I looked into the cost of defense, even in the right... its likely worth more than all of sparkfun the company put together. Their case seems ever weaker than ours.
I'd heard stories like this before, and thought them to be exaggerations. Surely the insanity couldn't have reached that level. It must just be sour grapes from those companies who were just a little bit shady. If it happened to us, well, we'd just explain that we had no ill intentions, it was an honest mistake, surely no one would confuse our name with... There are people in this world who have decided that its A-OK to make their living antagonizing the clearly innocent. This for me was the biggest shock.
Choose a new name boys, you're patent/trademark activists now, just like me.
Edit: Oh! I'm definitely ordering my Sparkfun hoodie while I still can! If they do lose the name, nothing will say "arduino geek" quite like that defunct nameplate. Wearing that badboy to maker-faire will be like wearing a Lion-O tshirt to comic-con.