121–130 of 160 posts
It's a bit of a shame that Fluke uses Facebook for publishing official statements. Other than that... well, good reaction from Fluke. I'd say all events, from seizing the multimeters to the resolution today, unfolded in the best way possible.
Explain to me why it's a shame to have used Facebook?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"what an amazing and generous response from Fluke" Agree. And curious what the PR value will be vs. the cost of goods for Fluke (which is their cost, not the wholesale and/or selling price). Personally I think it's unfortunate that they needed, in this day and age of social media, to have to bogu on this situation and get out in front of this issue by doing this. Of course by what I say in the first paragaph it may v…
I was really surprised and impressed not only with their response, but also with how quickly they responded. I've already spent a few thousand dollars on Fluke equipment this year, and could imagine spending a few thousand more before the year is up. I'm a small customer. It wouldn't take many like me to make up for ~30k worth of stuff.
They need to be more specific on what their trademarking.
Wow, what an amazing and generous response from Fluke. I can't remember a better response from a company, ever, in a trademark / patent / copyright / licensing dispute. And it's all written in straightforward language without a lot of marketingese.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
though they did.
No they didnt. Nobody questioned their bogus trademark yet. 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No they didnt. Nobody questioned their bogus trademark yet. 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…
Nitpicking: I think you have the colors wrong - it's "yellow case, dark face" as far as I understand. Not that it makes a huge difference..
Wow, what an amazing and generous response from Fluke. I can't remember a better response from a company, ever, in a trademark / patent / copyright / licensing dispute. And it's all written in straightforward language without a lot of marketingese.
Carlo Gavazzi (another manufacturer of measure and test gear) had a series of yellow meters with black backs (the reverse of the Fluke scheme), and other brands have had instances of meters with exactly the same scheme as Fluke uses today (Fluke originally did not use colour at all for their equipment).
The end result of all this is that a bunch of good, working equipment is going to end up destroyed, SparkFun will have to decide to continue their campaign in light of this PR move by Fluke and SparkFun's customers still lose. On top of that SparkFun's brand will be damaged and at least 2000 of their customers have a negative experience with them.
This is not about money, this is about a bunch of people being denied access to the tools they had already bought and no amount of PR is going to fix that short of those people being send a replacement (maybe with another colour, how many distinctively coloured multimeter brands could co-exist anyway?).
If they had been stamped 'Fluke' that would be another story entirely, but this is as far as I'm concerned just pushing for brand protection because the law allows for it.
As for the safety angle, that's a red herring, nobody in their right mind is going to assume the isolation class of a piece of equipment based on the color of the casing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
now let's see if that license can be used on a mythical "router" that apple builds. I'll bet that license has a ton of restrictions.
[1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fluke - definition #3
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, did your banana have "CAT III Max 600V" stencilled on it? The $15 multimeter does. I suspect the cheap meter has about the same right to wear that label as the banana.
Does Sparkfun's product actually fail in 590V environments? That seems like a more serious concern tha branding.
The problem with meeting CAT ratings is transient voltage spikes- I don't recall exact numbers, but some for some of the higher CAT ratings multimeters are required to withstand (meaning continue to operate, or fail in a safe way, with no harm to operator) several kilo-volts.
Cheaper multimeters just literally blow up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-FZP1U2dkM
Wow, what an amazing and generous response from Fluke. I can't remember a better response from a company, ever, in a trademark / patent / copyright / licensing dispute. And it's all written in straightforward language without a lot of marketingese.
I'm on the fence about how generous this is. Fluke was obviously headed for some bad PR, they were allowed to get a 'trade dress' protection for their not-so-distinctive design (I've seen yellow multimeters from long before I ever used a fluke, yellow is simply a good colour for a tool because it makes it stand out). Carlo Gavazzi (another manufacturer of measure and test gear) had a series of yellow meters with blac…