8 ms·

I agree that having to destroy a shipment of perfectly usable multimeters sucks, but this seems like a pretty clear cut case of trademark violation to me. That

I agree that having to destroy a shipment of perfectly usable multimeters sucks, but this seems like a pretty clear cut case of trademark violation to me. That multimeter really does look like a Fluke multimeter (see https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=fluke+multimeter https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=fluke+multimeter). It was probably designed that way on purpose, probably because Fluke has a reputation for manufacturing high-quality multimeters, and someone could confuse it with a Fluke multimeter at a glance.

Malarkey73 13y ago
Multimeters here in the UK are almost always yellow (or red less often). They've been mostly yellow as long as I can remember and I've never heard of Fluke.
- gjm11 13y ago
  A bit of googling turns up this forum thread with lots of pictures of old (and not so old) multimeters. A few typical pages: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/465/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/465/ Lots and lots of not-yellow multimeters, and the dark-with-yellow-surround ones do generally seems to be Flukes. But not quite all. There are some exceptions here: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/315/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/315/ but I think they may all be recent enough to postdate Fluke's trademark (which I think was granted in 2003).
- rtkwe 13y ago
  It's the dark grey/black face + the yellow shell/border that's the problem here. It's really similar to Fluke's usual design.
  - phaemon 13y ago
    I just searched on amazon.co.uk for multimeter and 7 out of 14 of the results have dark face + yellow shell/border. None of them are Fluke. Maybe they did invent that scheme and everyone copied them, but if so, they're not enforcing it in the UK.
  - rtkwe 13y ago
    @phaemon (HN please increase your comment thread depth) a) That's in the UK where Fluke doesn't have the same protections. b) Those are newer, cheap, meters aping the design of Flukes, for that search to mean anything it should look back before Fluke's popularity or at least before they started using the current trademarked design. c) Past just the first page the split gets much more even.
    - phaemon 13y ago
      You just need to wait a bit before replying. The link takes some time to appear. Your claim that they're "aping the design of Flukes" is unsupported. I haven't seen any evidence that Fluke invented that design or colour scheme, rather than it becoming a fairly common format for multimeters and then Fluke deciding to copyright the design.
      - rtkwe 13y ago
        Ah I'd never seen the link appear later before. A lot of older multimeters look like this: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ or something similar at least once handheld meters with multiple modes started to become an actual item. That whole thread is a decent cross section of multimeters, though it's skewed towards nice older meters as opposed to lower grade meters.
makomk 13y ago
Essentially any multimeter design with a dark body and yellow or orange surround would look just as much like a Fluke multimeter - scroll down to Exhibit 1 in the PDF, they haven't exactly been consistent in the design of their multimeters. (Probably any design with a red surround too since some of Fluke's multimeters have those.)
solve 13y ago
On the other hand, there's strong evidence that Fluke is using excessive anti-competitive practices to manipulate multimeter prices. Evidence: 1) Multimeters can be made for $10 or $15, but Fluke continues to dominate the market with equivalent meters costing 10x more. And don't tell me that these basic multimeters incur significant R&D costs. "Guilt should be determined in retrospect based on material gain." -- The gold standard for judging extremely powerful companies.
- larrys 13y ago
  "there's strong evidence that Fluke is using excessive anti-competitive practices" That's a totally different "crime" if you want to call it that. Has nothing to do with whether a company has the right to trademark a particular design which in this case they apparently do.
- rayiner 13y ago
  There's nothing particularly anti-competitive about not letting competitors use a particular easily identifiable color scheme associated with your product, largely because it has absolutely no functional impact on the product (and in any case, the product is not one where appearance is typically a factor in peoples' purchasing decisions). The fact that Fluke can sell $150 multi-meters when they can be made for $15 is because of the substantial value people attach to branding. $100 Ralph Lauren jeans are made for $10 in Vietnam or wherever, and the only piece of that product protected by trademark is the little RL label (fashion designs cannot be protected). But that's all it takes.
  - makomk 13y ago
    Yellow and black is probably the closest thing there is to a generic high-contrast colour scheme for multimeters though - everything is associated with one or more manufacturers. Agilent are orange and black, Bosch are green and black or green and dark green, and I think there are companies that could reasonably lay claim to red and blue. Meanwhile black and yellow have long been generic multimeter colours - since well before Fluke moved to their current scheme, I think.
larrys 13y ago
Along those lines here is the actual speciment they submitted when applying for the trademark: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75934005&docId=SPE20130208150603#docIndex=2&page=1 http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75934005&docId...
grmarcil 13y ago
To the contrary, check out all the non-Fluke multimeters with gray bodies and yellow surrounds: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=yellow+multimeter https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=yellow+multimeter
vilhelm_s 13y ago
But should you really be allowed to trademark industrial design? Consider Dell XPS ultrabooks. They are obviously designed to look like a Macbook, but with a Dell logo instead of the Apple logo (http://cdn-static.cnet.co.uk/i/product_media/40002464/image3/440x330-dell-xps-14-ultrabook-back.jpg http://cdn-static.cnet.co.uk/i/product_media/40002464/image3...). Or think about sport cars, Ferrari has a trademark for their horse logo, but they don't have a monopoly on "a sport car painted red". I think that is the ideal tradeoff---the logo lets a consumer know what they are buying, but you should still be allowed to buy cheap products that look stylish...
- wernercd 13y ago
  Should T-Mobile be able to trademark the color Magenta and prevent AT&T from using it? The court says yes: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/08/t-mobile-wins-lawsuit-against-atts-aio-wireless-for-magenta-trademark-infringement/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/08/t-mobile-wins-lawsui... Why would this be different? Using a known, good name brand like Fluke or T-Mobile... and diluting it's name by making confusing, derivative and lesser products. Using the color yellow shouldn't be off limits... but using yellow (or magenta) to confuse consumers should be.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Industrial design cannot be protected, but trade dress can. Trade dress protection is available when a particular, arbitrary and non-functional, design becomes distinctive of a product. For these aspects of design to be protected, it must actually be distinctive of the product (i.e. you can't just claim a mark on the gray/yellow combination, but you have to show, usually through surveys, that the market identifies that design with your product). Industrial design usually won't qualify because it's functional. The color comes from the use of aluminum, aluminum is used for its structural properties, particular colors have more aesthetic value in the market, etc. Trade dress has to be more specific, not functional, and arbitrary. A classic example is pink for Owens-Corning insulation. It's a totally arbitrary color choice for a product where aesthetics doesn't factor into buyers' choices, and had become strongly associated in the public with Owens-Corning's brand. If there was a functional reason for the pink color, or it was a situation where people would prefer a certain color for aesthetic reasons, the design choice wouldn't have been eligible for protection.
davedx 13y ago
"Sucks"? It's a terrible waste of energy and resources for a frivolous reason.
RA_Fisher 13y ago
Who cares? If a yellow border is the innovation that Fluke has to offer, let them be imitated, IMO.
- JonFish85 13y ago
  I disagree. If Fluke is known by their color scheme, and they are known as a quality product, then they have a valuable reputation to protect. If a friend of mine gets the crappy $15 DMM that "looks just like" my $200 Fluke, then wonders why it isn't accurate, breaks after a couple of months, etc, then Fluke is the one who loses, not Sparkfun.
  - lsaferite 13y ago
    Have you looked at a Fluke next to the SF DMM? They don't look like Flukes. Flukes have a very thick border visible from the front in a very bright yellow. The SF on has a very thin visible orangey yellow border caused by the back shell. The faces aren't similar at all beyond a large dial and display. Very different designs.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 13y ago
Except the non-Fluke devices don't have FLUKE across the front of the device, nor across the back of the yellow case. Most people glancing at it are going to see a multimeter, not a fluke. They would look for some kind of Fluke branding, and a yellow bezel with grey front plate is not that, for signs of flukeness. Especially in the red sparkfun card it is pretty clear that these are not fluke. I find it hard to understand that anyone would think this is a fluke device with even cursory inspection. Edit: your google images link is interesting. It shows some fluke devices being in red, not yellow, cases / bezels. Removing the word fluke from the search terms returns many devices that are either all yellow, or all grey, with a few other colours, and some that are grey in a yellow case. Many of the grey and yellow devices are not fluke devices. It'd be interesting to see how many devices were using dark grey in yellow before 2000.
- hapless 13y ago
  All of my older multimeters, from the 80s and 90s, were black or grey. The yellow/grey contrast is a recent development, and it would surprise me very much if it weren't a deliberate attempt to knock off Fluke.
periferral 13y ago
You are joking. All multimeters I've worked with have been yellow. And all multimeters look like ... em... multimeters. https://www.google.com/search?q=multimeter&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Kb4pU4iUMoPtoASa8oFY&sqi=2&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1920&bih=1070https://www.google.com/search?q=multimeter&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Kb4pU4iUMoPtoASa8oFY&sqi=2&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1920&bih=1070 https://www.google.com/search?q=multimeter&safe=active&sourc...
- caw 13y ago
  The mark is for "contrasting yellow border". I can pick out the Fluke equipment easily from all those images. It's not protecting the use of yellow, which is why the pure yellow devices exist.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I clicked on ones with what I judged to be a "contrasting yellow border" and only about 50% of them were actually Flukes. Seems this trademark is not evenly enforced.
watty 13y ago
There needs to be more to a patent than a primary color. Should car manufacturers be able to patent "black" cars? What happens when all primary colors have been patented?
- lsaferite 13y ago
  In this case it's a TM, not a patent
darkarmani 13y ago
I see a red bordered fluke in that search. Does this mean they own both yellow and red+grey multimeters?

Malarkey73 13y ago

Multimeters here in the UK are almost always yellow (or red less often). They've been mostly yellow as long as I can remember and I've never heard of Fluke.

gjm11 13y ago
A bit of googling turns up this forum thread with lots of pictures of old (and not so old) multimeters. A few typical pages: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/465/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/465/ Lots and lots of not-yellow multimeters, and the dark-with-yellow-surround ones do generally seems to be Flukes. But not quite all. There are some exceptions here: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/315/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/315/ but I think they may all be recent enough to postdate Fluke's trademark (which I think was granted in 2003).
rtkwe 13y ago
It's the dark grey/black face + the yellow shell/border that's the problem here. It's really similar to Fluke's usual design.
- phaemon 13y ago
  I just searched on amazon.co.uk for multimeter and 7 out of 14 of the results have dark face + yellow shell/border. None of them are Fluke. Maybe they did invent that scheme and everyone copied them, but if so, they're not enforcing it in the UK.
- rtkwe 13y ago
  @phaemon (HN please increase your comment thread depth) a) That's in the UK where Fluke doesn't have the same protections. b) Those are newer, cheap, meters aping the design of Flukes, for that search to mean anything it should look back before Fluke's popularity or at least before they started using the current trademarked design. c) Past just the first page the split gets much more even.
  - phaemon 13y ago
    You just need to wait a bit before replying. The link takes some time to appear. Your claim that they're "aping the design of Flukes" is unsupported. I haven't seen any evidence that Fluke invented that design or colour scheme, rather than it becoming a fairly common format for multimeters and then Fluke deciding to copyright the design.
    - rtkwe 13y ago
      Ah I'd never seen the link appear later before. A lot of older multimeters look like this: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/540/ or something similar at least once handheld meters with multiple modes started to become an actual item. That whole thread is a decent cross section of multimeters, though it's skewed towards nice older meters as opposed to lower grade meters.

makomk 13y ago

Essentially any multimeter design with a dark body and yellow or orange surround would look just as much like a Fluke multimeter - scroll down to Exhibit 1 in the PDF, they haven't exactly been consistent in the design of their multimeters. (Probably any design with a red surround too since some of Fluke's multimeters have those.)

solve 13y ago

On the other hand, there's strong evidence that Fluke is using excessive anti-competitive practices to manipulate multimeter prices. Evidence: 1) Multimeters can be made for $10 or $15, but Fluke continues to dominate the market with equivalent meters costing 10x more. And don't tell me that these basic multimeters incur significant R&D costs. "Guilt should be determined in retrospect based on material gain." -- The gold standard for judging extremely powerful companies.

larrys 13y ago
"there's strong evidence that Fluke is using excessive anti-competitive practices" That's a totally different "crime" if you want to call it that. Has nothing to do with whether a company has the right to trademark a particular design which in this case they apparently do.
rayiner 13y ago
There's nothing particularly anti-competitive about not letting competitors use a particular easily identifiable color scheme associated with your product, largely because it has absolutely no functional impact on the product (and in any case, the product is not one where appearance is typically a factor in peoples' purchasing decisions). The fact that Fluke can sell $150 multi-meters when they can be made for $15 is because of the substantial value people attach to branding. $100 Ralph Lauren jeans are made for $10 in Vietnam or wherever, and the only piece of that product protected by trademark is the little RL label (fashion designs cannot be protected). But that's all it takes.
- makomk 13y ago
  Yellow and black is probably the closest thing there is to a generic high-contrast colour scheme for multimeters though - everything is associated with one or more manufacturers. Agilent are orange and black, Bosch are green and black or green and dark green, and I think there are companies that could reasonably lay claim to red and blue. Meanwhile black and yellow have long been generic multimeter colours - since well before Fluke moved to their current scheme, I think.

larrys 13y ago

Along those lines here is the actual speciment they submitted when applying for the trademark: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75934005&docId=SPE20130208150603#docIndex=2&page=1 http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75934005&docId...

grmarcil 13y ago

To the contrary, check out all the non-Fluke multimeters with gray bodies and yellow surrounds: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=yellow+multimeter https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=yellow+multimeter

vilhelm_s 13y ago

But should you really be allowed to trademark industrial design? Consider Dell XPS ultrabooks. They are obviously designed to look like a Macbook, but with a Dell logo instead of the Apple logo (http://cdn-static.cnet.co.uk/i/product_media/40002464/image3/440x330-dell-xps-14-ultrabook-back.jpg http://cdn-static.cnet.co.uk/i/product_media/40002464/image3...). Or think about sport cars, Ferrari has a trademark for their horse logo, but they don't have a monopoly on "a sport car painted red". I think that is the ideal tradeoff---the logo lets a consumer know what they are buying, but you should still be allowed to buy cheap products that look stylish...

wernercd 13y ago
Should T-Mobile be able to trademark the color Magenta and prevent AT&T from using it? The court says yes: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/08/t-mobile-wins-lawsuit-against-atts-aio-wireless-for-magenta-trademark-infringement/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/08/t-mobile-wins-lawsui... Why would this be different? Using a known, good name brand like Fluke or T-Mobile... and diluting it's name by making confusing, derivative and lesser products. Using the color yellow shouldn't be off limits... but using yellow (or magenta) to confuse consumers should be.
rayiner 13y ago
Industrial design cannot be protected, but trade dress can. Trade dress protection is available when a particular, arbitrary and non-functional, design becomes distinctive of a product. For these aspects of design to be protected, it must actually be distinctive of the product (i.e. you can't just claim a mark on the gray/yellow combination, but you have to show, usually through surveys, that the market identifies that design with your product). Industrial design usually won't qualify because it's functional. The color comes from the use of aluminum, aluminum is used for its structural properties, particular colors have more aesthetic value in the market, etc. Trade dress has to be more specific, not functional, and arbitrary. A classic example is pink for Owens-Corning insulation. It's a totally arbitrary color choice for a product where aesthetics doesn't factor into buyers' choices, and had become strongly associated in the public with Owens-Corning's brand. If there was a functional reason for the pink color, or it was a situation where people would prefer a certain color for aesthetic reasons, the design choice wouldn't have been eligible for protection.

davedx 13y ago

"Sucks"? It's a terrible waste of energy and resources for a frivolous reason.

RA_Fisher 13y ago

Who cares? If a yellow border is the innovation that Fluke has to offer, let them be imitated, IMO.

JonFish85 13y ago
I disagree. If Fluke is known by their color scheme, and they are known as a quality product, then they have a valuable reputation to protect. If a friend of mine gets the crappy $15 DMM that "looks just like" my $200 Fluke, then wonders why it isn't accurate, breaks after a couple of months, etc, then Fluke is the one who loses, not Sparkfun.
- lsaferite 13y ago
  Have you looked at a Fluke next to the SF DMM? They don't look like Flukes. Flukes have a very thick border visible from the front in a very bright yellow. The SF on has a very thin visible orangey yellow border caused by the back shell. The faces aren't similar at all beyond a large dial and display. Very different designs.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

DanBC 13y ago

Except the non-Fluke devices don't have FLUKE across the front of the device, nor across the back of the yellow case. Most people glancing at it are going to see a multimeter, not a fluke. They would look for some kind of Fluke branding, and a yellow bezel with grey front plate is not that, for signs of flukeness. Especially in the red sparkfun card it is pretty clear that these are not fluke. I find it hard to understand that anyone would think this is a fluke device with even cursory inspection. Edit: your google images link is interesting. It shows some fluke devices being in red, not yellow, cases / bezels. Removing the word fluke from the search terms returns many devices that are either all yellow, or all grey, with a few other colours, and some that are grey in a yellow case. Many of the grey and yellow devices are not fluke devices. It'd be interesting to see how many devices were using dark grey in yellow before 2000.

hapless 13y ago
All of my older multimeters, from the 80s and 90s, were black or grey. The yellow/grey contrast is a recent development, and it would surprise me very much if it weren't a deliberate attempt to knock off Fluke.

periferral 13y ago

You are joking. All multimeters I've worked with have been yellow. And all multimeters look like ... em... multimeters. https://www.google.com/search?q=multimeter&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Kb4pU4iUMoPtoASa8oFY&sqi=2&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1920&bih=1070https://www.google.com/search?q=multimeter&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Kb4pU4iUMoPtoASa8oFY&sqi=2&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1920&bih=1070 https://www.google.com/search?q=multimeter&safe=active&sourc...

caw 13y ago
The mark is for "contrasting yellow border". I can pick out the Fluke equipment easily from all those images. It's not protecting the use of yellow, which is why the pure yellow devices exist.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I clicked on ones with what I judged to be a "contrasting yellow border" and only about 50% of them were actually Flukes. Seems this trademark is not evenly enforced.

watty 13y ago

There needs to be more to a patent than a primary color. Should car manufacturers be able to patent "black" cars? What happens when all primary colors have been patented?

lsaferite 13y ago
In this case it's a TM, not a patent

darkarmani 13y ago

I see a red bordered fluke in that search. Does this mean they own both yellow and red+grey multimeters?