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Fluke Donates Multimeters To SparkFun As Goodwill Gesture
Actually, I do RTFA writes "We recently heard about the confiscation of a delivery of multimeters to SparkFun for infringing on Fluke's trademark. One common thread in the discussions was the theme that Fluke should have let that shipment through as a goodwill gesture to SparkFun and the Maker community. Well, Fluke did one better. They announced they were sending more than $30k worth of official multimeters to SparkFun for them to do whatever they want with. SparkFun is most likely going to give them away. A great example of win-win-win?"
If you believe fluke's statement on the matter (personally I do), they didn't initiate this whole mess.
The Ars Technica article notes that the shipment of meters from Fluke exceeds the value of the original dodgy multimeters.
The cheep meters have more than a passing resemblance to Fluke ones, to the point that someone could actually pick one up and expect Fluke quality and safety, in the right environment.
Although the blog mentions, trademark , I bet the multi-meters were actually infringing upon trade dress of Fluke's multimeters. Trade mark reserves a specific logo/phrase/design. Trade dress protects the look and feel of the product. I learned a great deal about this distinction from Mattel when I created a Magic Eight Ball app for iOS when the iTunes app store first opened.
They are still selling cheap multimeters, just not yellow ones.
Yep. A big thing people don't get is safety. Have you ever had a cheap multimeter fuse blow and toss shards of glass through the case, avoiding your hand only because you weren't holding the meter there? I have. $100-$200 more for a meter with proper input protection, HRC fuses, a strong case, etc, is well worth the money. There is of course a lot more to Fluke meters' quality than just their input protection, they're ridiculously reliable (Dave Jones took a Fluke 87-V caving, swam with it, dropped it off a 15-meter bridge onto concrete repeatedly, and still didn't break it) and very accurate (for handhelds, good bench meters are of course better than handheld meters.) Fluke makes great equipment. Of course, the other top-end brands make similarly good equipment. Agilent meters are great, etc, etc.
Not a sentence!