

SparkFun Gets a Cease and Desist Letter - bisceglie
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=300

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nas
Not cool. I realize that companies feel like they have to protect their
trademark, even in borderline cases. However, this seems like a boneheaded
move for SPARC. People using SparkFun tend to be young techies, the kind of
people who might go on to become the hardware purchasing decision makers in
larger companies.

~~~
NathanKP
I appreciate SparkFun's response to the issue. I feel that it is very personal
and down-to-earth. SparkFun is doing the right thing by telling their
customers and the rest of the world about this pressure from SPARC. I'm sure
that their loyal customer base will respond as well. The post writer even
encourages them to email SPARC about the issue.

By the way, don't go to sparc(dot)org as linked to in the post. It is a
malware/attack site. I think the intended link was sparc.com

~~~
coderdude
The humour being that Sparc has bigger fish to fry than people with "Spark" in
their name.

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johnohara
Go to <http://tess2.uspto.gov/> and do a basic search on 'spark' and 'sparc'.
Are they sending c & d letters to these people too?

If they're suing SparkFun it must mean they want to use it in some 'Fun With
Sparc' marketing campaign. The agency that came up with the idea is now
panicked because they didn't bother to do a domain search prior to the pitch
and when it finally came up during last Tuesday's status meeting it was
decided to send it to legal and the person 'who handles these things.'

May as well do a trademark search on 'backpedal' while we're at it.

I like SparkFun and have purchased from them. There is absolutely no confusing
them with the other guys who push iron (and now databases) for a living.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Congratulations, guys; you've made it into the big time!

Seriously. Somebody remind me how hard it's supposed to be to get into law
school again? Sure, you gotta protect your client's trademark, but this is
ridiculous.

Reminds me of when I worked for a little hardware company and we got an order
from RamBus requiring that we disclose all sales we made of devices using RAM
chips because we weren't paying them royalties. Our attorney (nice having a
lawyer on your Board) just crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash, "they're
just on a fishing expedition. I'll wait til they get serious!" Was the last we
ever heard of it.

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noonespecial
Well that's Deja-vu for me big time. The exact same thing happened to us. It
turned out that the "plaintiff" was not even aware that the law firm involved
was taking the action. They had used them years ago to register some marks and
had some sort of perpetual retainer agreement. The lawyer had just run low on
clients and was fishing for billable hours. The other company were friends of
ours so we settled it most amiably. They were as surprised as we were.

The bad new is that sparkfun is still going to lose even if they get to keep
sparkfun.com. When I looked into the cost of defense, even in the right... its
likely worth more than all of sparkfun the company put together. Their case
seems ever weaker than ours.

I'd heard stories like this before, and thought them to be exaggerations.
Surely the insanity couldn't have reached that level. It _must_ just be sour
grapes from those companies who were just a little bit shady. If it happened
to us, well, we'd just explain that we had no ill intentions, it was an honest
mistake, surely no one would confuse our name with... There are people in this
world who have decided that its A-OK to make their living antagonizing the
clearly innocent. This for me was the biggest shock.

Choose a new name boys, you're patent/trademark activists now, just like me.

Edit: Oh! I'm definitely ordering my Sparkfun hoodie while I still can! If
they do lose the name, nothing will say _"arduino geek"_ quite like that
defunct nameplate. Wearing that badboy to maker-faire will be like wearing a
Lion-O tshirt to comic-con.

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tezza
now that Sparc mention it... SparkFun _does_ sound like SparcFun,

Let's hope the two parties can resolve this amicably.

Choosing a domain name/brand is so damn hard. You can think you're in the
clear and years later an established company can realise or assert there's a
conflict.

~~~
thirdstation
Maybe we should start a grassroots campaign to insist that SPARC is pronounced
"sparsee".

~~~
pierrefar
How about just "sparse", relating to the intelligence behind this letter?

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ilovecomputers
Why does this happen in this day and age?

Another case of trademark trolling:
<http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8810200>

~~~
timmaah
I'm loving that Rock Art has been getting so much press about this. Their
sales must be sky-rocketing.

I live a town over from them and am lucky enough to be able to pick up their
beers in any liquor store and it is on tap in any restaurant or bar around
here. Their ridge-runner is my choice during winter.

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goodkarma
Is it really that ridiculous? I'm not a lawyer, but I can see both sides to
this.

The whole purpose of a trademark is to protect your brand from anything that
could be construed as "confusingly similar". Spark and Sparc sound the same
and are nearly identical in spelling, and they are both involved in the tech
industry.

Whomever made the decision to send a C&D wasn't completely out of line in
their reasoning. (Especially since it does not cost a whole lot to send a C&D.
It will cost a lot more to take it to court, which I expect will be a factor
in SparkFun's decision making process.)

That said, saying the two similar names are in the "tech industry" may not be
sufficient justification for the trademark dispute any longer. The industry
has so much breadth nowadays and there are so many businesses involved, as
long as SparkFun can prove that there is enough differentiation between what
they do and what Sparc does they can probably get around it (with some legal
tapdancing).

This would probably not be an issue if SparkFun sold handmade chocolate
candies :-)

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chaosmachine
Firefox thinks sparc.org is an "attack site":

<http://i36.tinypic.com/f2trth.png>

~~~
NathanKP
I found this as well. I think that he meant to link to sparc.com but instead
linked to spark.org which is a known attack site.

By the way sparc.com appears to be done right now. Its probably DDOSed by all
the people complaining.

~~~
NikkiA
No, sparc.org is the right domain, most likely someone thought it funny to
report sparc.org (although google's malware interception page states that it's
been reported several times over the last couple of months, so maybe Sparc
Intl. really are hosting malware?)

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fnid
I have to say, I agree with the lawyers on this one. They are similar
products, i.e. electronics, not like coffee and computers. Brand names aren't
just written, they are spoken. They are both electronics. SPARC customers
_could_ think SparkFun is actually related to SPARC.

I think the SparkFun team is going to lose this one.

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zouhair
Looks like some lawyer needs to justify his compensations.

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yayolius
I really love sparkfun, it a great company with a great site, i feel terribe
about this. You have to be crazy to think that a SPARC computer can be so FUN
that you would spect to find something about it in sparkfun.com

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nitrogen
SparkFun has been operating nationally (internationally?) for years. You'd
think somebody at SPARC would've noticed by now. If I were SparkFun, I'd
expect that SPARC's inaction over all these years would count for something.

~~~
ErrantX
They applied for a trademark recently though; I imagine that is what sparked
(oh dear :() this off.

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molecularhack
Sounds like a soon-to-be botched attempt at "job preservation".

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lucifer
Just rename your company OrACoolFunk.

