A nicer solution could have been:
Fluke: "We'll swap your 2000 chinese multimeters with 2000 Fluke multimeters. We will send the non-fluke multimeters to under-funded universities in africa/asia/wherever."
Fluke: "We'll swap your 2000 chinese multimeters with 2000 Fluke multimeters. We will send the non-fluke multimeters to under-funded universities in africa/asia/wherever."
You may or may not agree with the trademark being issued in the first place, but it was, and I don't blame fluke for wanting to protect their brand. They make a really good product. These things are pieces of garbage in comparison.
"A trademark is a brand name. A trademark or service mark includes any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used or intended to be used to identify and distinguish the goods/services of one seller or provider from those of others, and to indicate the source of the goods/services. " http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/
You could make an argument that the products themselves are look-alikes, or pursue them if they created a similar trademark to cause confusion, but it doesnt seem to me that they obviously acted to violate a trademark.
This is coming from the USPTO's website. If it's invalid because it only mentions Fluke's trade dress and not its name or logo, that'll probably be news to the folks running the USPTO. You might want to mention it to them.
Sparkfun isnt exactly in ideal position to fight Fluke, after all they very well might make a ton of money selling Fluke gear in the future. No point getting hostile over ~$20K.
Fluke received a trademark for a item design that WAS ALREADY IN USE for at least 20 years. Trademark in the center of all this is ~"dark case, yellow face". They didnt even come up with the design first. Look at the second one from the top: http://www.stevenjohnson.com/apparatusdesignco/index.html
Fluke multimeters started white/gray/beige, then went black, then yellow. Yellow on black is new to fluke.
Basically they STOLE generic, already used design and trademarked it same way one click and round corners received US Patents.
Just because a product is distributed with different intent and audience does not mean it does not deserve to exist.
Excuse me while I enjoy this hot pocket, I find them quite alright, thank you.
The product looks like a Fluke -- until you look more closely and notice how awful the build quality is. That a cheap Chinese multimeter looks like a Fluke was not a fluke.
I've seen a lot more than that spent on marketing stunts, except in this case the consumers actually benefit by getting better equipment.
If touching it can kill you, I wouldn't go anywhere near it with a 15 bucks meter. And for everything else, the sheer terribleness of these will soon annoy you into buying something usable.
Some very good examples of this principle:
http://mackys.livejournal.com/838591.html?nojs=1
http://www.afrigadget.com/2010/02/28/jua-kali-dressed-in-mit...
For hardware supplies, yes, having a bad device is better than having none. For crypto software - no, it must be state-of-art or we're screwed.