I have come to believe that there are contracts and there are intentions behind the contracts. A person or a company can sign a contract, and have no plans to fulfill it and at the same time a person or a company can fulfill a promise without signing any contract. While contracts are a necessary evil, the real question is what does the other party intend to do.

Carlo Gavazzi (another manufacturer of measure and test gear) had a series of yellow meters with black backs (the reverse of the Fluke scheme), and other brands have had instances of meters with exactly the same scheme as Fluke uses today (Fluke originally did not use colour at all for their equipment).

The end result of all this is that a bunch of good, working equipment is going to end up destroyed, SparkFun will have to decide to continue their campaign in light of this PR move by Fluke and SparkFun's customers still lose. On top of that SparkFun's brand will be damaged and at least 2000 of their customers have a negative experience with them.

This is not about money, this is about a bunch of people being denied access to the tools they had already bought and no amount of PR is going to fix that short of those people being send a replacement (maybe with another colour, how many distinctively coloured multimeter brands could co-exist anyway?).

If they had been stamped 'Fluke' that would be another story entirely, but this is as far as I'm concerned just pushing for brand protection because the law allows for it.

As for the safety angle, that's a red herring, nobody in their right mind is going to assume the isolation class of a piece of equipment based on the color of the casing.

They were out of stock, so presumably orders were taken and won't be filled, and now it will take even longer to fill those orders. Maybe some of those customers will even buy Fluke (unlikely, $20 vs $200 or so).

'their campaign': the alternative route, to seek redress, to get the colour 'yellow' narrowed down to the point where an orange DVM would be allowed to enter the United States without risking it being seized. It's a tool not a Louis Vuitton bag (I hope I spelled that right), and the colour scheme is not relevant. If it was unsafe or something like that then I could see the point.

Sparkfun did what they could, they're unable to meet this challenge head-on, this shipment (and possibly whatever else is in the pipeline) is lost for all the wrong reasons and Fluke gets to make out like they're the good guys. Pick your battles is good advice, and SparkFun has rightly decided this one isn't theirs but the grace is mostly on their side and significantly less on Fluke's.

This is exactly the argument I've seen from EEs so far -- that Fluke meters are much safer than the knockoffs, and that the grey-with-yellow-trim color scheme is distinctive to Fluke.

The EEs' safety concerns seem overblown to me, but they know a lot more about their field than I do, so I'm not inclined to dismiss them.

Fluke had other options here. I doubt that the "Maker community" is really even a significant part of Fluke's sales, and the internet has the attention span of a cracked-out gnat. They could've easily ignored the whole thing altogether and been no worse for wear. Before anyone objects: pop quiz time, how many of you are at all aware of Autodesk's licensing policies?

Fluke is as bound by the law as everyone else; as they explained in their post, they can't ignore trademark infringements, and they weren't even aware of the customs' seizure, they didn't make that decision.

So, yeah, donating a pile of units to Sparkfun is generous of them and I really don't think it was primarily motivated by PR.

As far as the wastefulness of the action goes ... I don't disagree, but I also find it peculiar that people are even mentioning that, especially in a forum like this one, in this age of ubiquitous disposable electronics. My little shop has been having to tell a lot of folks recently that they should replace their otherwise perfectly good computer just because XP support is about over. Nobody seems to think that's wasteful, though.

Agree. And curious what the PR value will be vs. the cost of goods for Fluke (which is their cost, not the wholesale and/or selling price).

Personally I think it's unfortunate that they needed, in this day and age of social media, to have to bogu on this situation and get out in front of this issue by doing this. Of course by what I say in the first paragaph it may very well not be a bogu at all but end up being a rather smart move to gain business in the maker community.

I've been observing business for a longer time than most people on HN have been around. I have to say I've never ever seen anything like this happen.

I've already spent a few thousand dollars on Fluke equipment this year, and could imagine spending a few thousand more before the year is up. I'm a small customer. It wouldn't take many like me to make up for ~30k worth of stuff.

They need to be more specific on what their trademarking.

Still prohibited selling yellow multimeters?? Is that a joke??

I think there are many Fluke PR employees posting messages telling what a great company Fluke is for this response... IMHO, this patent is just ridiculous.