7 ms·

This has been a fascinating story. As someone who has been an arduino user/fan for years I knew very little of what was going on till Hackaday started covering

by hoopism 12y ago

This has been a fascinating story. As someone who has been an arduino user/fan for years I knew very little of what was going on till Hackaday started covering it. The 1 minute primer: "In short, there are two companies calling themselves “Arduino” at the moment. One, Arduino LLC was founded by [Massimo Banzi], [David Cuartielles], [David Mellis], [Tom Igoe] and [Gianluca Martino] in 2009, runs the website arduino.cc, and has been directing and releasing the code that makes it all work. Most of these folks had been working together on what would become the Arduino project since as early as 2005. The other “Arduino” used to be called Smart Projects and was the manufacturing arm of the project founded and run by [Gianluca Martino]. Smart Projects changed their name to Arduino SRL in November 2014. (A “Società a responsabilità limitata” is one form of Italian limited-liability company.) They have been a major producer of Arduino boards from the very beginning and recently registered the domain arduino.org." Read more at HAD (http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/ http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/) For background (before the recent turmoil) there is a documentary about arduino. https://vimeo.com/18539129 https://vimeo.com/18539129

ihsw 12y ago
How was this allowed to happen? It's like Dell renaming itself to "Microsoft SRL" and then selling "Windows 9000" to beat MS on the version number train. Am I incorrect in my observation? Was Arduino supposed to be an open name that anyone can adopt, a la Unix and all the varieties that are derived from that name (HPUX, Linux, BSD Unix, UnixWare, Unix System V, etc)?
- abstractbeliefs 12y ago
  When Arduino got popular, the original team of five spun off a manufacturing company, Smart Projects, to handle the manufacturing and distribution tedium, with 4 of the 5 partners staying in the Development arm. When push came to shove and the development side wanted to make the manufacturing non-exclusive, Smart Projects beat them to the legal punch and registered the trademark before the development team did, forked and uprevved what they could, and cut off the income from sales going back to the dev team.
  - frik 12y ago
    The German Heise News had an article: Arduino against Arduino: Founder argue about the company English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fmake%2Fmeldung%2FArduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruender-streiten-um-die-Firma-2549653.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... German: http://www.heise.de/make/meldung/Arduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruender-streiten-um-die-Firma-2549653.html http://www.heise.de/make/meldung/Arduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruen...
    - Alupis 12y ago
      Seems to be a lot of "piggy-backers" piling onto the Github page without understanding the history... > By the way, you (meaning the people who started this phony organization and made this phony fork) know that you've made the front page of Hacker News, right? If you continue, there will be no shortage of people who will constantly point out that you're a bunch of wannabe fakers. It's sad that HN is perpetuating this behavior.
      - pygy_ 12y ago
        They're right. See [0] for the details. Excerpt: When the Arduino project started, the five co-founders (myself [Massimo Banzi] , David Cuartielles, David Mellis, Tom Igoe, and Gianluca Martino) decided to create a company that would own the trademarks and manage the business side of Arduino: Manufacturers would build and sell boards, Arduino would get a royalty from them like in many other businesses, such as in the fashion world. This happened in April 2008 when Arduino LLC was founded and the bylaws of the company specified that each of the five founders would transfer to this company any ownership of the Arduino brand. At the end of 2008 when Arduino was about to register the trademark in the US and worldwide, unknown to us and without any advance notice, Gianluca’s company Smart Projects — our main boards manufacturer — went ahead and registered the Arduino name in Italy and kept this news for himself for almost two years. After the process of registering in the US was over and our lawyer tried to extend the trademark to the rest of the world, he realised that somebody had registered it already in Italy. We (Tom, David, David, and I) were shocked and demanded explanations. Gianluca reassured us that this was done to protect our collective investment. We were friends (or so we thought), so based on this agreement we kept working together for years, received royalties while quietly trying to bring the trademark back into the Arduino company through endless discussions that dragged on while Arduino became very successful thanks to the hard work each one of us put into it (and for a long time we didn’t even get a salary out of it). As the project became more successful and sales increased, the attempts at regaining control of the Italian trademark registration became more and more difficult with larger and larger demands made to us while Gianluca effectively vetoed us from either bringing in other manufacturers or get any external investment. We made headway with Arduino creating a lot of innovation, pushing the boundaries of open source hardware, hiring a lot of talented people around the world and ultimately building an amazing community around the arduino.cc website. ——— 0. http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-arduino/ http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-ar...
- Untit1ed 12y ago
  It's a bit like that if Michael Dell was one of the original Microsoft founders and fell out with Bill Gates et al.
- toyg 12y ago
  It's like "Windows" was trademarked in Italy several years ago in a way that became known only when "Microsoft" went to trademark "Windows" in the US. Now "Dell" can sell "Windows" in Italy and "Microsoft" can sell it in the US. This happened mostly because "Dell" was the only manufacturer of "Windows" systems for a while, and didn't really appreciate that "Microsoft" wanted to license "Windows" on other hardware. Add to it that the original "Dell" founder has actually sold the lot to a third party with no previous history, who clearly does not care about the community.
- hoopism 12y ago
  Massimo did an interview with Make that explains his side of things a bit: http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-arduino/ http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-ar...
- thekevan 12y ago
  "It's like Dell renaming itself to "Microsoft SRL" and then selling "Windows 9000" to beat MS on the version number train." Not really. It would be more like Dell splitting into two companies, one for hardware one for software, and then later not really getting along and fighting over the name.
at-fates-hands 12y ago
In Italy are there no laws about infringing another companies trademark property? Here in the US, If I started a company called Pepsi, LLC I'd get sued within minutes of filing my business license. It seems to me they have a very strong case for infringement based on using the exact same business name. Again, here in the US, even similar sounding business names are open to be sued: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244249 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244249 http://the-llc-company.com/form-llc/trademark-infringement-business-name/ http://the-llc-company.com/form-llc/trademark-infringement-b... The case that pretty much started it all, so much so, now the rules of infringement are often referred to as the "The Polaroid Factors": https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tmcases/polaroid.htm https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tmcas...
- smcl 12y ago
  The story as described by the GP is shortened for clarity, but apparently there was no bad blood between the teams when "Arduino Srl" was registered and it was believed one individual held that italian trademark on behalf of the team on good faith. It was only much later that Arduino Srl started the whole imitation game
- aij 12y ago
  Trademarks are per-country, not global. For example, the iFone vs. iPhone conflict in Mexico doesn't affect the rest of the world.

by hoopism 12y ago

ihsw 12y ago

How was this allowed to happen? It's like Dell renaming itself to "Microsoft SRL" and then selling "Windows 9000" to beat MS on the version number train. Am I incorrect in my observation? Was Arduino supposed to be an open name that anyone can adopt, a la Unix and all the varieties that are derived from that name (HPUX, Linux, BSD Unix, UnixWare, Unix System V, etc)?

abstractbeliefs 12y ago
When Arduino got popular, the original team of five spun off a manufacturing company, Smart Projects, to handle the manufacturing and distribution tedium, with 4 of the 5 partners staying in the Development arm. When push came to shove and the development side wanted to make the manufacturing non-exclusive, Smart Projects beat them to the legal punch and registered the trademark before the development team did, forked and uprevved what they could, and cut off the income from sales going back to the dev team.
- frik 12y ago
  The German Heise News had an article: Arduino against Arduino: Founder argue about the company English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fmake%2Fmeldung%2FArduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruender-streiten-um-die-Firma-2549653.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... German: http://www.heise.de/make/meldung/Arduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruender-streiten-um-die-Firma-2549653.html http://www.heise.de/make/meldung/Arduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruen...
  - Alupis 12y ago
    Seems to be a lot of "piggy-backers" piling onto the Github page without understanding the history... > By the way, you (meaning the people who started this phony organization and made this phony fork) know that you've made the front page of Hacker News, right? If you continue, there will be no shortage of people who will constantly point out that you're a bunch of wannabe fakers. It's sad that HN is perpetuating this behavior.
    - pygy_ 12y ago
      They're right. See [0] for the details. Excerpt: When the Arduino project started, the five co-founders (myself [Massimo Banzi] , David Cuartielles, David Mellis, Tom Igoe, and Gianluca Martino) decided to create a company that would own the trademarks and manage the business side of Arduino: Manufacturers would build and sell boards, Arduino would get a royalty from them like in many other businesses, such as in the fashion world. This happened in April 2008 when Arduino LLC was founded and the bylaws of the company specified that each of the five founders would transfer to this company any ownership of the Arduino brand. At the end of 2008 when Arduino was about to register the trademark in the US and worldwide, unknown to us and without any advance notice, Gianluca’s company Smart Projects — our main boards manufacturer — went ahead and registered the Arduino name in Italy and kept this news for himself for almost two years. After the process of registering in the US was over and our lawyer tried to extend the trademark to the rest of the world, he realised that somebody had registered it already in Italy. We (Tom, David, David, and I) were shocked and demanded explanations. Gianluca reassured us that this was done to protect our collective investment. We were friends (or so we thought), so based on this agreement we kept working together for years, received royalties while quietly trying to bring the trademark back into the Arduino company through endless discussions that dragged on while Arduino became very successful thanks to the hard work each one of us put into it (and for a long time we didn’t even get a salary out of it). As the project became more successful and sales increased, the attempts at regaining control of the Italian trademark registration became more and more difficult with larger and larger demands made to us while Gianluca effectively vetoed us from either bringing in other manufacturers or get any external investment. We made headway with Arduino creating a lot of innovation, pushing the boundaries of open source hardware, hiring a lot of talented people around the world and ultimately building an amazing community around the arduino.cc website. ——— 0. http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-arduino/ http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-ar...
Untit1ed 12y ago
It's a bit like that if Michael Dell was one of the original Microsoft founders and fell out with Bill Gates et al.
toyg 12y ago
It's like "Windows" was trademarked in Italy several years ago in a way that became known only when "Microsoft" went to trademark "Windows" in the US. Now "Dell" can sell "Windows" in Italy and "Microsoft" can sell it in the US. This happened mostly because "Dell" was the only manufacturer of "Windows" systems for a while, and didn't really appreciate that "Microsoft" wanted to license "Windows" on other hardware. Add to it that the original "Dell" founder has actually sold the lot to a third party with no previous history, who clearly does not care about the community.
hoopism 12y ago
Massimo did an interview with Make that explains his side of things a bit: http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-arduino/ http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-ar...
thekevan 12y ago
"It's like Dell renaming itself to "Microsoft SRL" and then selling "Windows 9000" to beat MS on the version number train." Not really. It would be more like Dell splitting into two companies, one for hardware one for software, and then later not really getting along and fighting over the name.

at-fates-hands 12y ago

In Italy are there no laws about infringing another companies trademark property? Here in the US, If I started a company called Pepsi, LLC I'd get sued within minutes of filing my business license. It seems to me they have a very strong case for infringement based on using the exact same business name. Again, here in the US, even similar sounding business names are open to be sued: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244249 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244249 http://the-llc-company.com/form-llc/trademark-infringement-business-name/ http://the-llc-company.com/form-llc/trademark-infringement-b... The case that pretty much started it all, so much so, now the rules of infringement are often referred to as the "The Polaroid Factors": https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tmcases/polaroid.htm https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tmcas...

smcl 12y ago
The story as described by the GP is shortened for clarity, but apparently there was no bad blood between the teams when "Arduino Srl" was registered and it was believed one individual held that italian trademark on behalf of the team on good faith. It was only much later that Arduino Srl started the whole imitation game
aij 12y ago
Trademarks are per-country, not global. For example, the iFone vs. iPhone conflict in Mexico doesn't affect the rest of the world.