Our friends over at Adafruit just made an interesting suggestion regarding the Arduino vs. Arduino saga. They noticed that the packaging for the Arduino UNO includes a pamphlet that states:

Manufactured under license
from Arduino by
SMART PROJECTS S.r.l.

Wow. That’s pretty interesting. Smart Projects is the former name of Arduino SRL. If you missed it, go back and read some of our previous coverage. Specifically, Arduino SRL is claiming to be the real trademark holder and has gone as far as forking the Arduino IDE and upping the version number in what appears to be an attempt to direct users toward their newly founded Arduino.org website/ecosystem/quagmire. If they feel they own the trademark why would they include this statement in their packaging?

Finding this in the a unit from a September 2014 is interesting. But Adafruit’s post is a call to action. We share their curiosity of discovering how far back official Arduino hardware has included such license notices. So, head on down to your work bench… start peeling back years worth of discarded hacks, clipped leads, fried servos, and other detritus. Find the packaging and take a picture. Bonus points if you have an invoice that associates a date with it. Either way, post the pictures on your social media hub of choice with #TeamArduinoCC. You can also embed it in the comments using HTML IMG tags if you wish.

Standard “I am not a lawyer” disclaimer applies here. We know you aren’t either so let’s all share what we think this means to pending lawsuits in the comments. Does this matter and why?