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The Courts Build Hardware

Fight Over Arduino Name Pits Originators Against Contract Manufacturer 33

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."
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Fight Over Arduino Name Pits Originators Against Contract Manufacturer

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  • Elliot Williams did dome digging

    Dome digging is pretty crazy. One false move and you'll fall into the stadium.

  • Legalities aside (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @04:55PM (#49245223)

    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.

    • It's pretty clear from anyone in the community that Arduino(TM) should belong to Arduino LLC.

      It should also be clear to anyone with half a brain that the first thing you do when starting a project, is nail down the IP. Registering a trademark is trivial (I own about a dozen). If you don't, you are building on a foundation of sand.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        not every project has money and not every project knows its going to catch on at first

        buying a trademark for every idea gets expensive for some of us.

        apparently you've only ever had a dozen ideas

      • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        well, you might not want to focus on it right away when you're trying to keep an open, community, cloners welcome face at the beginning. being zealous about trademarks, patents and stuff at such a phase is generally bad.

        thing is, once they realized it was a success and could pay for the bills, they've started being real bitches. which wouldn't be so bad if they produced nice boards with their license money, but their next gen boards just aren't very good. due is sucky.

        so there's dozens of boards now on the

  • If you look at the Buy Arduino Boards [arduino.cc] section of the Arduino site, all the boards are out of stock except for a couple of LilyPads. Also, the UNO Rev3 on that site lists for 20 euros. If you go to AliExpress you can find a clone for $6 with free shipping, including a USB cable, and if you want you can also get a clone for $3 (with free shipping) if you're willing to trade the FTDI USB-serial chip for a CH340G chip. From comments online the latter works fine, it just requires a different driver, and a lot

    • Or you can just forget the bootloader and program your boards via the 6-pins ISP header and bypass the FTDI vs CH340 issues.

  • was trying to compile the firmware for my 3D printer. It turned out that the latest firmware (at the time) would not compile in latest version of the Arduino IDE. I had to hunt for a load an older version of the Arduino IDE to get it to work.

    Open source is OK, but when you really have to get something done, a product that a bunch of people are paid to maintain and add to (Microsoft being the most notable exception) is usually going to work better. I always liked PIC microcontrollers and their IDE because

  • 1 mouse scroll = A TALE OF TWO INTERNETS OF THINGS
    Article quality = 0%
    Resolution = alt+f4

Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided at all costs. -- N. Alexander.

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