SparkFun: We Hear You • Hacker News Board

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#151

Post by dTal » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 5:22 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #150

dTal wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. Every multimeter I've ever owned was yellow. The Sparkfun multimeters look like every other cheap multimeter, and decidedly unlike Fluke's. It's not even the same damn shade of yellow. This is pointless waste and a huge scandal.

Does that mean Fluke forfeits the right to try and stop the flow of knockoff products?

Did you miss where I said "The Sparkfun multimeters look like every other cheap multimeter, and decidedly unlike Fluke's"? I reject the premise that any yellow multimeter is a "knockoff product". You can buy similar multimeters in any Radio Shack in the world.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#152

Post by mindslight » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #107

mindslight wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, I do not believe that the firms are actually direct competitors. Fluke seems to somewhat agree, judging by this gesture of goodwill that they're giving Sparkfun. We hear of plenty of similar cases where some firm sends a C&D to a barely related firm, and a common refrain is that the first firm simply must defend their trademark in such a manner, leaving no room for judgment. I am pointing out that this…

Fluke and the Chinese manufacturers of the cheap multimeters, who are the infringers in this case, most certainly are direct competitors. They are both selling multimeters, and the price differential is beside the point. Sparkfun is just a distributor, they're not engaged in trademark infringement and have just been caught in the middle. Fluke is buying itself some nice PR, but that doesn't alter the legal situation…

As the importer and contractor of the manufacturing, Sparkfun is the responsible party. First, the manufacturer just uses whatever colors/marking/customization that Sparkfun requests (note the Sparkfun logo on the meter). Second, trademarks are de facto irrelevant in China.

I personally don't think this meter directly competes with Fluke - Sparkfun has lots of great things, but test equipment is not among them. But we can agree to disagree about this, and my point stands irrespective of it - Companies, despite being legally compelled to churn on anything remotely related to their trademark, can choose to protect their marks from erosion in amicable ways. Thus, companies can and should be judged for the actions they do take.

The reason I called the original statement an 'aphorism' is because it's indeed true in a sense, but its simplicity hides the entirety of the situation. It's part of a larger trend of people abdicating individual reason and responsibility, and passing the decision making to a nebulous non-entity ("everyone else is doing it.."). If a professional job is performed this way, then the value-add of a person is merely a human face, and they should be replaced with a short shell script. Then the actual professional human up the chain can better exercise their own judgment.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#153

Post by astrodust » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 5:47 PM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #55

Instead of destroying them, why not paint them so as not to waste them?

Should really send them back and get a new housing made.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#154

Post by mindslight » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 5:53 PM UTC

gonzo wrote: post #112

mindslight wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But a company could legally "protect" their trademark by issuing yearly licenses for token compensation for products that they consider different enough, but the law might not. Nope. This is known as "naked licensing",and can lead to loss of the mark.

Then maybe the implementation is a non-binding letter of understanding between the two companies, stating that they both believe their business areas and marks are sufficiently different to avoid confusion. Any court that does not respect trademark owners reaching their own thought-out amicable agreement is an unjust one.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#155

Post by tripzilch » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

davesque wrote: post #72

Am I the only one that is finding their response to be unsatisfactory? Let me translate it for everyone: "Hey, we realize how much it sucks that your merchandise was seized and will now be destroyed. As far as that goes, well...too bad. _However_, we'll allow you just this once to distribute our own merchandise and spread awareness of our brand name for us." Is this really a fair deal? Does SparkFun really want to be…

I'd call it "clever", but not "admirable".

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#156

Post by thaumaturgy » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 6:36 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #138

jweather wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only customer involved is Sparkfun, they were purchasing the meters for their own stock. Nobody had pre-ordered them. Not sure what SparkFun campaign you're talking about.

https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1428 They were out of stock, so presumably orders were taken and won't be filled, and now it will take even longer to fill those orders. Maybe some of those customers will even buy Fluke (unlikely, $20 vs $200 or so). 'their campaign': the alternative route, to seek redress, to get the colour 'yellow' narrowed down to the point where an orange DVM would be allowed to enter the United Sta…

> If it was unsafe or something like that then I could see the point.

This is exactly the argument I've seen from EEs so far -- that Fluke meters are much safer than the knockoffs, and that the grey-with-yellow-trim color scheme is distinctive to Fluke.

The EEs' safety concerns seem overblown to me, but they know a lot more about their field than I do, so I'm not inclined to dismiss them.

Fluke had other options here. I doubt that the "Maker community" is really even a significant part of Fluke's sales, and the internet has the attention span of a cracked-out gnat. They could've easily ignored the whole thing altogether and been no worse for wear. Before anyone objects: pop quiz time, how many of you are at all aware of Autodesk's licensing policies?

Fluke is as bound by the law as everyone else; as they explained in their post, they can't ignore trademark infringements, and they weren't even aware of the customs' seizure, they didn't make that decision.

So, yeah, donating a pile of units to Sparkfun is generous of them and I really don't think it was primarily motivated by PR.

As far as the wastefulness of the action goes ... I don't disagree, but I also find it peculiar that people are even mentioning that, especially in a forum like this one, in this age of ubiquitous disposable electronics. My little shop has been having to tell a lot of folks recently that they should replace their otherwise perfectly good computer just because XP support is about over. Nobody seems to think that's wasteful, though.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#157

Post by davesque » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

TerraHertz wrote: post #101

Superficially it may seem like a generous response from Fluke. But you can bet that if there wasn't such a backlash against their action of lodging a complaint with US Customs, they would not have done this. Also I think they were already suffering serious commercial and image harm, which they realized would only get worse. So really, it's self-preservation, not generosity. Generosity would be to accept that 'yellow…

Yep, exactly. Furthermore, SparkFun gets dubious "privilege" of being a Fluke distributor for a day.

"Don't worry SparkFun. We'll let you give out some of _our_ product as compensation. Oh, that doesn't really help _your_ business in the long run? Jeeze, sorry I guess..."

I'm a little disappointed in the Hacker News crowd on this one. It doesn't seem like anyone's thinking this through.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#158

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 7:06 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #152

anigbrowl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fluke and the Chinese manufacturers of the cheap multimeters, who are the infringers in this case, most certainly are direct competitors. They are both selling multimeters, and the price differential is beside the point. Sparkfun is just a distributor, they're not engaged in trademark infringement and have just been caught in the middle. Fluke is buying itself some nice PR, but that doesn't alter the legal situation…

As the importer and contractor of the manufacturing, Sparkfun is the responsible party. First, the manufacturer just uses whatever colors/marking/customization that Sparkfun requests (note the Sparkfun logo on the meter). Second, trademarks are de facto irrelevant in China. I personally don't think this meter directly competes with Fluke - Sparkfun has lots of great things, but test equipment is not among them. But w…

You're right about Sparkfun being the responsible party - I misread the packaging, so sorry about that.

But there's no arguing that Sparkfun isn't in direct competition; it's a multimeter, Fluke sells multimeters, the fact that they're not in the same price bracket is beside the point. It's completely rational that Fluke would not want to dilute its mark by allowing an inferior product to go out in the same trade dress, so I don't agree with your notion that licensing it out would be OK and I don't agree with the poster above that a sticker is sufficient. And again, bear in mind that Fluke initiated a trade complaint, but it's CBP that ended up with the goods in a warehouse asking Spark to make the decision to pay for them to be sent back to China or to be destroyed. They have no way of knowing whther they're destined for a cool little company like Sparkfun or some dingy hardware store that's trying to fleece its customers by selling cheap knockoffs.

Really, the issue here is for Sparkfun - trademark searches are free these days, Fluke isn't even seeking any kind of compensation for them, so I don't know what their excuse is for not checking. If they were selling an mp3 player or a coffee mug in the Fluke black-and-yellow trade dress, then yes I'd be for some sort of licensing arrangement, and I agree that those often work out better for the trademark holder as a kind of free advertising.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#159

Post by urza » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 8:00 PM UTC

This is ridiculous. How can you trademark yellow color? America is crazy.

All these patents, copyrights, trademarks and other form of memes monopolization are only slowing down cultural evolution to the disadvantage for all of us. The cultural evolution work similarly as biological. If yellow color is good for users, let is spread. Then some company will most likely add small tweak that will turn into yet another benefit and better product. The society benefits. Whereas in current system only one company benefits. That is wrong because patents etc were made to benefit the society, not some greedy companies.

Re: SparkFun: We Hear You

#160

Post by fancyketchup » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 2:05 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #77

fancyketchup wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing about comments like this one are that they help me identify whose opinion not to take seriously in the future. Not being able to distinguish the difference between copying multiple distinctive elements of trade dress (yellow back AND yellow front border AND uniform grey front) and inadvertently using a particular color anywhere on the product is really quite an amazing feat.

Yep, any use of hyperbole forever invalidates everything someone says. FWIW, there's only two "elements" (the back and border are one piece), and their distinctiveness is specified in terms of basic colors one learns in elementary school. The ability to monopolize a general two-tone color scheme on a durable tool that someone may use every day is outright ridiculous.

It may be the case that the two pieces of plastic are "yellow back and border" and "grey front cover, " but having any other color on the back invalidates the infringement claim. If they had done a yellow border with grey sides and back, they would not have infringed. If they had done yellow back and grey front (with no border) they wouldn't have infringed. If the had done yellow front and grey back without border or yellow front and back with grey border they wouldn't have infringed.

There are all sorts of ways to make a yellow and grey multimeter that don't infringe on Fluke's trade dress. Fluke isn't monopolizing a general two-tone color scheme: They are monopolizing a specific arrangement of two colors, and that is an eminently reasonable thing to do.

This is a little like arguing "Well, copyright shouldn't exist because you shouldn't get a monopoly on just some general words." But that's a strawman--you can only obtain a copyright on a specific arrangement of general words.