Phonetically Identical! What the F**K are these attorneys smoking. What else now? We are not going to use “SPARK” in any business name because of this lame ass company? How about “The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition” = SPARC.

They choose SPARC because they couldn’t have gotten a trade mark if they selected SPARK as a company name. Now they are trying to reverse it? Go take a hike. God, I hate attorneys…

I wouldn’t worry too much about these SPARC people, probably just trying to get more victims to their site.

The attorneys are doing what they have to do, and are only doing their job. The real asshats are the SPARC folks who ultimately have chosen to allow their legal representatives to go after Spark in an open and obvious grab for money and attention.

SUN prove to make bad decisions for the last decade anyways. They were a market leader but refuse to adapt to the new world with LINUX system running on cheap INTEL Processors. Perhaps they thought, it wasn’t a thread. We’ve replaced most of our SUN SPARC servers with other brands running LINUX and we have now 32 times more processing power, and whole a lot of cash in our pockets. Considering a SW company actually bought SUN (ORACLE), I am guessing their intention is not to keep the HW division. So, the SPARC name might not have much more time left anyways.

Live long and prosper SPARKFUN!

what nonsense, I hope if something in court comes of it SPARC gets their asses handed to them.

SparkFun is fun.
SPARC, Inc. is not fun.

see how they differ?

There is nothing to fight. This is a standard letter law firms send out hoping you will shit in your pants and comply with whatever they say.

In general, if you ignore the letters they will give up. You have nothing to gain by responding. In the rarest of cases, they will file suit. In which case, then you can give up or fight.

Unless you’ve started a company called MickDoneld’s, it’s usually nothing to worry about.

yesys: That was the best example of the difference between these two companies I’ve seen so far :)

If you google SPARC you get a completely different site tied to a completely different non-profit.

Also, I’ll bet SparkFun occasionally produces literal sparks when working on their projects, whereas SPARC probably hasn’t in ages if they’re doing it right.

I send out a lot of these letters at my job (in-house counsel), mostly to web scammers of various types. This letter from K&L is pretty amusing. I think the guy correctly demolishes it on the sparkfun site. It’s a nonstarter. Tell them to file a UDRP if they’re so upset. They will lose hard, obviously.

I wonder if this is trying to tie up anything that could possibly be considered a loose end by any stretch of the imagination before Oracle acquires Sun.

Boo! Bad form Sparc/Oracle/Sun. Have you ever noticed that non-microsoft companies tend to act like the big bad windows bully eventually. This seems something Microsoft of the mid 90′s would be up too. Not the happy go lucky Sun guys. What next, Apple going to be super proprietary and not play well with other companies…oh wait…

what a crap, the word “spark” have a meaning already it not acronym, what if someone name company a “brick” do we have to call bricks a rectangular box shape construction martial made from clay&cement. Sadly this crap might cost sparktime money and time

anyone interested in a new car?how about a nissan? lets head on over to their homepage….

http://nissan.com/

^^ these guys have held out for years.

If they succeed, they’ll take on MS$
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/community/spark/default.mspx

They’re probably just upset that sparkfun and arl.org come up before them now when I google “sparc”.

Trolls.

I have lost all respect for Sun, what little I had.

lol @ pookey

Wow. http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=www.sparc.org/

“Malicious software includes 12 trojan(s), 8 exploit(s), 6 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 2 new process(es) on the target machine.”

Signed:
Cr Redfield

Zombies are now involved. its on.

Clue:

In trademark law you must defend your trademark lest its name become common use. i.e. Xerox, Kleenax, Google…

That is why Google sued a publication for using google as a verb.

IANAL

you know, I tried to think up something witty and clever to say. but, this pisses me off to the point all I can really say is, what a bunch of scum sucking douchebags.

“Malicious software includes 12 trojan(s), 8 exploit(s), 6 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 2 new process(es) on the target machine.”

Here is a hint for SPARC International. Rethink your hiring policy. Your lawyers are crap, your IT guys are crap. See a pattern?

??? Looks like a grab for attention by some hackers who compromised sparc dot org. Under no circumstance does anybody purchasing from Sparkfun think they are buying a Sun/SPARC product. I wonder if SPARC international knows yet that they were taken over?

From: Larry DBag Gates, representing ADAY industries
To: HACKADAY
Re: Cease-and-desist order

It came to our attention that you are using ADAY in your name. Shame on you! We have countless free hours every day here at ADAY Industries, so we’ve decided to send you this letter. Clearly WE ARE > you, as we have “Industries” in our name and you don’t.

Effective immediately, stop using ADAY in your name, or else! We mean it! Check out the exclamation marks!

All your base is belong to us!

Sincerely,
ADAY Industries

@takato: someone already has, just check out the google attack site report about it.

Here’s an idea… I am a SparkFun Customer, as well as a (past) user of SPARC based computing products. It has never occurred to me in all the time I have known about both companies that they were at all related. I personally am willing to sign a legal document stating this fact, perhaps if any others around here feel the same way they would as well.

A great deal of this trademark crap is about “reasonable” confusion over the name, which this, in my opinion, clearly is not.

I’m going to support the SparkFun legal fund by buying some of their awesome gear.

The rule for bad and crappy companies… when profits drop (or were never there to begin with)… litigate!

Dear Mr. Prometheus,
It has come to our attention that you currently claim to have stolen fire from the gods. you should be aware that SPARC international owns both the name and the patent on sparks. Please desist from producing all derivative works, including but not limited to cigarette lighters, fires, turbo boosts on mariokart for the wii, and the holocaust. Thank you for your kind attention.

Wow… that’s ridiculous.
I went there and got an absurd warning. Give them all domain? Really?
SparkFun ftw

Dear SPARC,
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Sincerely, Matt

Disclaimer: I am not or ever have been a representative of SparkFun, and any and all opinions in this post are of me solely and do not represent the opinions of SparkFun as a whole.

Damn those silly gooses at SparkFun had it coming! :D
No not rly, this is all just American stupidity taking It’s place, since no person with logic would make this thing go through It’s a safe bet.

Oh wait… This is an American thing, nevermind the logic part.. Srsly, do something, stand up for yourself sparkfun!

Next they’ll go after every automotive company for using “SparkPlugs” in their products…

Trademark trolling SparkFun which has nothing to do with SPARC, an acronym and trademark for past due and dated computer architecture from Sun Microsystems is supported by a website that is listed by Google as being ruinous to my computer’s health.

You really know and support your technology, eh? Can’t even run a website. Don’t know that SparkFun, while a source for educational electronics components, doesn’t produce anything based on SPARC architechure, technology or byproducts thereof.

Your claim is laughable as SparkFun is as closely aligned to your business claims as marine SPAR Varnish. Only an incompetent would be misled after touring SparkFun’s website and then attempting to fight off a computer viral infection after trying to view yours.

For your perusal so you may call in your lax IT department on Monday morning and see if they can disinfect your website…

Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for sparc.org

What is the current listing status for sparc.org?

Site is listed as suspicious – visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 9 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 244 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-10-22, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-10-22.

Malicious software includes 12 trojan(s), 8 exploit(s), 6 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 2 new process(es) on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 6 domain(s), including keymydomains.com/, ncenterpanel.cn/, updatedate.cn/.

2 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including keymydomains.com/, specialgt.com/.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS21844 (THEPLANET).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, sparc.org did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

Next steps:

Return to the previous page.
* If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

This is just absurd ! What are they trying to get at ? Are they jealous of sparkfun.com’s success ? What is it really ? And whilst they at it why not sue the following sites http://www.sparkenergy.co.uk/ , http://spark.com/ , http://www.sparc.ac.uk/ , http://www.sparc.org.nz/ , http://www.sparkelectronics.co.uk/ . If your going to act silly why not go all the way?

I for one can definitely distinguish “spark” from “sparc” . Look up the definition of “spark” please.

And how is SPARC and Spark….. Know what? You guys with the funny, I-toss-salad-for-a-living, slack-jaw looking faces calling yourself lawyers need to stfu. /endrant

Legally speaking Sparc and Spark are different
both Yahoo and Google blocks it for me
run a scan on the site :
Malicious software includes 8 trojan(s), 6 exploit(s), 4 scripting exploit(s).

Malicious software is hosted on 5 domain(s), including keymydomains.com/, ncenterpanel.cn/, updatedate.cn/.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including keymydomains.com/.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS21844 (THEPLANET).

is it april 1 already?

I am bot sure if this is ethically correct for me to suggest such a thing but, I am thinking about leaving some comments on their contact mail address as written on their contact page “sparcinfo AT sparc.org”. Do not get me wrong; I am just talking about a few sentences, asking them to come to their senses, and be logical.

SPARC = Scalable Processor ARChitecture : A trademark of SUN MICROSYSTEMS.
Not owned by sparc.org !!!
Also, I would read SparkFun as having fun with electricity (sparks)… Wait for the court to decide.. LOL Should be more sparks flying there !!

Some one missed out at the ‘Big Bang’ how the hell did the lawyers miss that one? – They created the biggest object in our solar system and somehow forgot to register the name as a trademark. Now some other blood sucking leach has it :-(

FAIL!!!
complete failure to present a valid body of evidence.
Furthermore I have yet to see how SparkFun even remotely takes away business from a trademark that has been copied by non-profits and the like.
seriously if this even makes it to court,there is some major logistical oversights involved.
And as many other posts have presented SPARC does not = SPARKFUN!!!The malware present apon entering
http://www.sparc.org is evidence of how commited folks are to SparkFun.

Meeting adjourned
##END##

What a Pile of crap, funnist thing i ever read in a long time. I hope SparkFun fights this Full tooth and nail.

SUN should go after Sunkist.

I’m not sure to chalk this story up to a CLUELESS legal department or a DOUCHEBAG company. Either way, this is a PR disaster for them. They need to publically retract this with apology as fast as possible.

Trademark Trolling means we’re circling the drain

Just like urban areas have to deal with a problem called urban blight, we are seeing that Silicon Valley is dealing, or rather in this case creating a problem called Silicon Blight.

SPARC International and by association, SUN Microsystems are attacking their future by embroiling a source (SparkFun Electronics) for
electronics components and educational information for our future electronics technicians, engineers, firmware programmers and robotics specialists.

The spurious attempt by SPARC International to fraudulently steal SparkFun Electronics domain name sends the message to these future workers that we are living in the United States of America, the land of NO OPPORTUNITY, NO FUTURE, and NO JUSTICE. You are sending the message
that the best route to getting tech jobs would be to find an H1B Visa holder, get very friendly and attempt to emigrate for a tech internship overseas.

SUN Microsystems customers tend to be pretty well educated, it takes a little higher level of knowledge to implement your equipment. We know
that SPARC is an architecture used in a big, really expensive box that truthfully can be replaced today by a few high end Intel products with more readily available replacement parts and an operating system that tends to have more people familiar with its setup and operation and are dealing with management who wants to cut costs.

We probably also are people who waste our off hours tinkering with electronics projects, building autonomous robots, goofing around with
microprocessors and interesting ways of monitoring our house pets over the internet while we are maintaining your SUN Microsystems computers
which don’t do a very good job of implementing all these Rube Goldberg like inventions. For parts to create these products, we depend on SparkFun Electronics.

I don’t see SUN Microsystems or SPARC International stepping up to the plate in my lifetime to become an equivalent of DigiKey or Mouser (SparkFun’s actual type of business). I don’t see putting an array of ARM, ATMega, PIC and other microcontrollers together using flash cards for memory with GPS input, two axis gyro, servo and gear motor outputs to create a SPARC architecture based server system.

Your feeling an economic pinch, deciding to set a bunch of lawyers after an electronics components supplier and electronics technology educator instead of a true competitor screams of desperation on a massive scale.
If you win, your name is basically synonymous with all that’s going wrong in the US tech sector. just by having the letter sent out, SUN
Microsystems and SPARK International have done themselves damage.

SPARC is an acronym denoting a computer architecture.

SparkFun is a company that provides components that will not be used in a SPARC architecture computer system and your attack will through their
educational channels, send the message to young electronics enthusiasts that US technology employers like SUN Microsystems don’t want them.

I was going to say the exact same thing as Marco. It has to be a scam or phishing expedition. The fact that there was no information on how to transfer the domain is one clue.
I will disagree halfway with Marco, though. Never ignore a letter from a lawyer. We had this happen with our company a while back when we broke ties with a company we distributed parts for. We had parts that we bought from them in our stock to sell to our customers. They tried to sue us because we were selling parts with their brand name on it, which are normally available only through distributors. They were trying to sue us on many points, including copyright infringement because the instruction sheets in the kits had their logo. That’s like a Chevy dealer selling a Ford car and being sued because the original owner’s manual came with it.
If we hasn’t responded, we would have had to go through court instead of a mediator.

@You guys who are sending emails using foul language and name-calling: Don’t you realize that lawyers don’t have the time or inclination to respond to such letters? They just get put in the trash bin and not taken seriously (much like the drunk redneck on Youtube spouting his whargrbl).