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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?"
Fluke moves from villain to hero.
$30K is cheap for good PR.
Their trademark, which is for "multimeter with yellow border", which they essentially stole from over 20 years of common publicly-available usage during which Fluke's own multimeters were typically grey?
As the article notes, SparkFun isn't about to try to resell these guys, so SparkFun is still out their entire shipment. What would have been a lot more meaningful of Fluke to do would be to cancel the trademark. That being said, I love Fluke multimeters. Five years of physics labs really made me believe their unofficial motto, "If it works, it's a Fluke."
Why should they cancel their trademark? In what world is that even remotely the right thing to do here?
The slashdot community is hilarious sometimes.
The slashdot community is hilarious sometimes.
Here's the way it works around here:
If I produce software, I want to get paid for it. If someone else produces software, I'll steal it.
When I make a product, no one else can make anything like it. When someone else makes a product like someone else, they're free to rip off the design because you can't copyright or trademark that shit.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Trademarking a color combination and JUST that it's BS.
It is bullshit to say this is only about the color combination. The knockoff ones look exactly like Fluke devices, and it is hardly accidental. Your argument makes it seem that some good faith is involved on the part of the manufacturer of the fake Fluke meters, and that the violation is trivial, but that is simply not the case.
They didn't.. insofar as Fluke reps standing at ports waiting for a multimeter to pass by their eyes and go "Whoa, Nelly!" - or even getting a call in advance telling them that a shipment of DMMs was found that may or may not infringe.
They did... insofar as Fluke having registered for the trade dress in the first place.
They didn't... insofar as cheap knockoffs trying to copy Fluke's looks - regardless of intent there, Fluke rather they didn't - and since asking nicely tends not to work, trade dress it is.
A lot of people seem to have missed the issue in the original story anyway (even if it may have come across as an attack against Fluke based on e.g. the title).
SparkFun doesn't really mind Fluke's trade dress (other than believing it to be overly broad - they themselves deem the old SFE DMM's border to be more of an orange..). What they mind is the inflexibility of the system once you're confronted with such an issue. For example, SFE didn't appear to have any way to tell CBP that they believed the borders to be orange and thus not even run afoul of the trade dress to begin with and enter e.g. arbitration with either the CBP or with Fluke. There's also the matter of how the product gets destroyed, with only a quoted price per hour - but no indication of how long it would take. Responsible destruction would take a very long time, a shredder should take less than 30 minutes; either could easily be possible for the price cited. Then there's the whole option of 'either ship them away or have them destroyed' in the first place; No "you can store them here and adjust the product so it no longer infringes", and even if you could adjust them, the period in which you have to make that decision is rather short.
While it's easy enough to say that SFE should have done better in figuring out this could occur beforehand, that doesn't help once the issue does arise.
Some will shrug that off and say "well I guess if you have to learn the hard way...", others will contemplate the bureaucracy.
Note that this is pretty much a separate issue from whether or not the color combo should be something that you can get a trade mark/dress on in the first place, which most people focused on (next to the "if you copy a popular brand, you oughtta know this can happen" discussion).
To be clear, I mean specifically the "multimeter with a yellow border = Fluke" trademark. As plenty of people in comments to the previous article noted, yellow is the natural color for a safety device.
SparkFun is in the business of selling DIY electronics. They're more like a modern Heath.
They're out the original shipment, but Fluke stepped in with an absolutely unnecessary act of goodwill. Now SparkFun's broken even, because they still have multimeters to sell to make their business, and the customers that would have bought the original ones still want multimeters, and now SparkFun has the Fluke brand, to boot...
But this is no longer in the hands of the inventory people. This is marketing. Sure, SparkFun could probably sell the multimeters at a very nice profit, but that's not their business. They're selling electronics in general, so they thrive on the repeat business rather than one-time equipment sales. Giving away these multimeters to loyal customers is a nice way to build their own brand loyalty.
Fluke looks like the good guy. SparkFun gets cheap viral marketing. Everybody's walking away happy.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You forgot the part where it is appropriate to go to a grocery store, determine for yourself how much the goods on the shelves should cost, and leave that dollar amount on the shelf in lieu of paying what the grocer is asking.
But those bastards better not abuse the licensing terms on my software.