Hackaday has an in-depth piece on the legal fight between Arduino (LLC) and Arduino (SRL), over the Arduino name and direction.
Although the Arduino has been in development since 2005, the company Arduino LLC was originally founded in 2009 by Gianluca Martino, Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, David Mellis and Tom Igoe, and runs arduino.cc.
Martino also founded the company "Smart Projects" as a manufacturer for Arduino hardware.
In 2014 Martino sold his shares in "Smart Projects", and Federico Musto was appointed CEO. At around this time the company changed name to Arduino SRL and registered the domain arduino.org.
This did not go down well, and lawsuits are in flight.
In short, on one side is Arduino LLC, run by the original Arduino Five and hosting arduino.cc. On the other is now called Arduino SRL, run by a former co-developer [Federico Musto] who bought out the largest producer of Arduino boards and opened up arduino.org.
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The claims to invalidate Arduino LLC’s trademark on “Arduino” can basically be summarized as follows: “We filed for trademark in September of 2014 and have been producing boards labelled Arduino since 2005. Arduino LLC only came into being in 2009 and wasn’t in control of the name at the time it applied for the trademark.”
To which Arduino LLC’s response essentially reads “We’ve had the trademark on the word Arduino longer than you have, and we deny all the rest.”
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So what does all of this mean for the future of Arduino as we know it? There’s certainly been a code fork and there are at least two divergent hardware design approaches to the IoT and strategic visions for the two firms. The trademark issues may not be resolved until 2016, though, so in the mean time there’s going to be significant market confusion. Not to mention the two similar websites.
The story of the legal battle between the two companies had been featured in an earlier hackaday article, and there's alternative coverage at zdnet and I Programmer
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2015, @04:42PM
money and politics.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tibman on Saturday March 14 2015, @06:54PM
Whois says Arduino.cc was registered 26 Oct 2005. I'm guessing the actual IDE was available even before then. Arduino LLC should win this one.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday March 14 2015, @10:37PM
My money's on Arduino.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by TLA on Sunday March 15 2015, @01:09AM
where did Musto spring up from? Also, was he appointed by virtue of management skill or other politic, or was it simply because he owns the company?
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday March 15 2015, @10:02AM
AIUI/from TFA Musto owns the company that bought up Smart Projects (Gheo SA), which looks to be how he gets to be CEO.
He also runs a company called Dog Hunter (LLC) which is a design consultancy that "helped develop the Arduino Yun" (according to hackaday), so it sounds like he has a prior track record in Arduino as well, which would explain why Martino chose to sell to him.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday March 15 2015, @10:53PM
There are plenty of competitors to the Arduino, any political problems the original has that result in slack will no doubt see it taken up by the others in the marketplace.