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Sparc Sends SparkFun Electronics C&D Letter
moogied writes "SparkFun.com, a electronics component provider, has been sent a cease and desist letter by Sparc in response to the lengthy trademark process that SparkFun is participating in. The letter states 'Because the dominant portion of the SparkFun mark, namely, SPARK, is phonetically identical and nearly visually identical to SI's SPARC mark, and because it is used in connection with identical goods, we believe confusion is likely to occur among the relevant purchasing group.' SparkFun.com has provided the entire contents of the letter, with a breakdown of points it feels are most relevant."
guess who won't be buying any more sparc servers?
Unless you mean on eBay, I'd say: "Everyone".
I am not a crackpot.
...slashdot readers are bringing SparkFun.com to it's knees as we speak.
Stand back, SPARC, we'll take care of this!
THL phish sticks
Come on, now. They have SPARK in the name; they're an electronics company. The name is a playful moniker and nobody would ever confuse them with Sparc.
When I was in the USAF they called the electricians "spark chasers". ANY electronics company should be able to have "spark" in their name. For Sun to lay claim to a common word that describes the first thing anybody thinks of when they think of electricity (when Sin's is spelled differently) is ludicrous. It's like the ApleFrosting company suing anybody who sells any kind of apple product wit "apple" in the name.
I lost a lot of my esteem for Sun with this. I wonder if it has anything to do with Oracle?
Free Martian Whores!
That the dominant part of SPARC is not fun.
Nullius in verba
I can't wait for IBM to sue BMW because after all, both of them share the letters "BM" and that might confuse a lot of people. Disney could probably have a go at McDonald's because after all, Donald is the name of a famous Disney character....
Hopefully Sparkfun won't get a retarded judge, and this will be laughed out of court.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sun has nothing to do with this. SPARC International owns the trademark, not Sun.
eclecti.cc
Sun named their product line after a natural phenomenon, a spark, and is now going after any one using the natural phenomenon's namesake?
No. Sun Microsystems is a member of Sparc International, along with a slew of other companies (TI, Hitachi, Fujitsu, etc, etc -- http://www.sparc.org/members.html), but Sparc International != Sun.
Aren't you required to vigorously defend your trademark or else stand to lose it?
Yeah, it may be ridiculous, and yeah, a judge may decide that it is indeed ridiculous as well. But they -still- have to go through these claims in order to vigorously defend.
Vigorous defense of one's trademark does not demand that one pursue ridiculous or even questionable claims. All it means is that you can't knowingly allow violation of your trademark, then attempt to enforce it later. Where a case appears legally questionable, or outright stupid, there is absolutely no duty to pursue it. All the normal rules of civil procedure apply, including Rule 11. "Vigorous defense of trademark" is not a defense for filing a claim unsupported by law.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Firefox warning; apparently www.sparc.org/index.html has been reported as an attack site. Nice.
That's a very narrow interpretation. If you allow your trademark to be diluted, then you weaken your ability to defend it later, even with more meritorious claims against different infringers.
Failure to defend a trademark can be used to overturn the trademark assignment if contested.
IANAL, obviously. But I've been responsible for trademarks at several employers, and had lengthy conversations with attorneys on the matter -- this is just my understanding based on those conversations. Of course, since they IP attorneys get paid to contest infringing use, they are motivated to ensure I want to vigorously defend my trademarks...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Aren't you required to vigorously defend your trademark or else stand to lose it?
If they were genuinely concerned about losing their trademark, while admitting that SparkFun is not at all likely to be confused with Sparc, they could grant SparkFun trademark rights for $1. Basically tell them "we agree not to sue you for infringing what we believe is our rightful trademark, in exchange for consideration".
I'm tired of that damn "the law made me do it!" excuse. No, it didn't. There are plenty of remedies outside the courts that can accomplish the same ends.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
How do you protect your trademark without sending out C&Ds?
Dang - I just posted the answer above. But to recap: you license it. Sell the "offending" party the right to continue using their name for the minimum dollar amount necessary to create a binding contract (which I think is traditionally $1). That way they're in the clear, and in the event that someone else infringes in the future, you can prove that you're aware and have dealt with other infringers in the past.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Scumbag lawyers don't get paid when gentlemen act like gentlemen and do things like that.
This is about scumbag IP lawyers chasing ambulances looking for money.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In other news, a number of large companies have suffered downtime recently from switching from data center servers to Arduinos for their mission critical applications.
Yikes.
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://www.sparc.org/&hl=en
What is the current listing status for sparc.org?
Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 9 time(s) over the past 90 days.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 244 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-10-22, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-10-22.
Malicious software includes 12 trojan(s), 8 exploit(s), 6 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 2 new process(es) on the target machine.
Malicious software is hosted on 6 domain(s), including keymydomains.com/, ncenterpanel.cn/, updatedate.cn/.
2 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including keymydomains.com/, specialgt.com/.
This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS21844 (THEPLANET).