Arduino Announces New Brand, Genuino, Manufacturing Partnership with Adafruit | Hacker News Reader

Arduino Announces New Brand, Genuino, Manufacturing Partnership with Adafruit

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90 pointszaaaaz27 comments

This is why you want to get your trademarks and domains set up early.

    arduino.cc - the original
    arduinosrl.it - the rogue manufacturer. Uses same logo.
    arduino.net - Poser porn
    arduino.com - T-shirt store

The US trademark is owned by "ARDUINO, LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MASSACHUSETTS", whoever they are.

In all fairness, the Arduino name is itself originally take from the name of a bar in Italy where the project founders used to hang out. Think about how that bar owner would feel about this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino#History

Trademarks are limited to the area of product they apply to. The purpose of trademarks is "identify and distinguish the goods/services of one seller or provider from those of others, and to indicate the source of the goods/services." No one is going to be surprised that those 2 arduinos aren't the same entity, or walk into the bar and wonder why little computers aren't on the menu, so trademark law completely ignores this, and it's extremely common so the bar owner shouldn't feel bad at all.

You can change your name to Barak Obama, and you'll get internet commenters saying things that start with "in all fairness...", but the white house won't be returning your calls.

Arduino LLC is the "good guys" (EDIT: in Arduino LLC vs SRL)

Well, at least if you don't go into the relationship between Arduino and Wiring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_(development_platform) created by Banzi's doctoral student http://wiki.wiring.co/images/7/76/Wiring_thesis.pdf .

People keep bringing this up as if there is a dispute between them, but I can't find it.

Not on the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_%28development_platform%...

Not on the creators website:

http://barraganstudio.com/b/?p=185

The Wiring website even links Arduino as a sister project:

http://wiring.org.co/

Arduino SRL also has the most official sounding and looking arduino.org domain/website.

True, but the website is shit, just like the arduinosrl.it website. You can definitely tell the difference. Feels like a dodgy website.

I think a break away from that name will do them good. It will take some time but it's for the best.

I still don't understand what kind of standing the Arduino brand stealers (formerly Smart Projects, first manufacturers of Arduino) have to take over the brand worldwide.

They probably don't but who knows. However, now they can move forward and away from their former POS partner.

You mean that the factory that was building the Arduinos just took over the brand?

From the article: "Much of 2015 has seen the open-source board maker defending itself from its former manufacturing partner, which recently claimed ownership of the brand, launched its own Arduino product line and website, and has worked to bar distributors from buying Arduino products from other manufacturers."

Yes, I saw that, but does "manufacturing partner" mean "factory"?

Pretty much, yes.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino#Legal_dispute

  At the end of 2008, Gianluca Martino's company, Smart Projects,
  registered the Arduino trademark in Italy and kept this a secret from the
  other co-founders for about two years. This was revealed when the
  Arduino company tried to register the trademark in other areas of the
  world (they originally registered only in the US), and discovered that it
  was already registered in Italy. Negotiations with Gianluca and his
  company to bring the trademark under control of the original Arduino
  company were not successful, and in 2014 Smart Projects began refusing to
  pay royalties. Smart Projects appointed a new CEO, Mr. Musto, who
  renamed the company to Arduino SRL and created a website named
  arduino.org, copying the graphics and layout of the original Arduino.cc.
  This resulted in a rift in the Arduino development team, and although all
  Arduino boards are still available to consumers, and the designs are
  open source, the implications of this are uncertain.

Oh wow, that's super dodgy.

Smart Projects Srl actually trademarked Arduino back in... 2008 I think? Before the American organization claiming to be the real Arduino even existed, in any case, and they've publicly stated they knew about that trademark all along and chose not to fight it.

I might be misreading this, but I think the factory is System Elettronica, owned by Ludovico Apruzzese. http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/2013/03/15/a-visit-to-the-a...

You're trying to understand the wrong thing. Understand the cost of a global trademark fight vs. the cost of rebranding.

Think of it like a terrorist organization occupying a town and them declaring themselves a new country. The original manufacturer has the trademark in their locale. They were also the primary manufacturer of all branded products, and according to the article, had many folks sign a letter where they would agree to only by arduino products from said manufacturer.

That is sort of like holding the town hostage with a bunch of guns.

From the sequence of events it does not seem like this was an "unplanned" event by Arduino SRL. It will be interesting to see what happens next after the Genuino brand starts getting pushed.

> had many folks sign a letter where they would agree to only by arduino products from said manufacturer.

That's really the part I'm stunned about. How did they get leverage to get distributors to sign that? The article said "or pay a fine", how is that legal?

I think they should have just chosen some new unique name. "Genuino" is just baking the memory of this schism into their new brand, and comes off as a blatant legal manoeuvre rather than taking the high road and starting over with branding.

Isn't Genuino unique enough? And it's a clever play on the original name (genuine with an -uino suffix like the original).

It's not clever at all. Genuino sounds like a cheap knock off, like countless other *duinos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arduino_boards_and_comp...

arduino.cc has stated that they're not fans of spawn-offs with that suffix:

>Note that while we don't attempt to restrict uses of the "duino" suffix, its use causes the Italians on the team to cringe (apparently it sounds terrible); you might want to avoid it. (It's also trademarked by a Hungarian company.)

Source: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ

"Genuino" is the actual Italian word for "genuine".

To Italians it sounds very good, and evokes images of a "handcrafted" brand.

An article from March that explains the split in a bit more detail: http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/

Excellent move. Reclaiming the Arduino (soon to be Genuino) movement and also bringing manufacturing to the US. Adafruit has been a great part of the maker movement here, glad to see them participating in this next phase of the Arduino.

Well played, Genuino.

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