Fight Over Arduino Name Pits Originators Against Contract Manufacturer

szczys writes "Arduino is a household name in hobby electronics. But now there are two companies calling themselves Arduino and as you've probably guessed this is going to play out in the courts. How can this be? One company started the Arduino movement and used the other company, a contract manufacturer, to actually make the hardware. This went on for a few years before the trademark was actually granted. Elliot Williams did some digging to help figure out how this all might shake out."

Comments

Re:Dome Diggers!

[freeze128]

Maybe the editors should do dome editing.

Legalities aside

[Dracos]

It's pretty clear from anyone in the community that Arduino(TM) should belong to Arduino LLC. Massimo Banzi is the one person most associated with the name, arduino.cc is where everyone gets the IDE from and where the brand guidelines are, and a simple whois lookup shows it was created 26 October 2005.

But this is going to get very dirty and will drag out for a while.

Re:Legalities aside

[ShanghaiBill]

Yea- I don't know, but I don't have $5k in lawyer fees and trademark registration fees to throw around.

You don't need a lawyer to register a trademark. You just fill out a form. It doesn't cost anywhere near $5k.

Re:Legalities aside

[ArcadeMan]

It's less than 5000$ to register a trademark in all countries?

Re:Arduino hardware = Dead on arrival

[anagama]

I've been studiously buying official boards because that means money went back to Arduino in some way (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ , scroll down a little to the official board part).

However, if they're just going to be burning their time and money on litigation -- well, I'm not so keen on supporting that and I think I'll just start buying clones.