SparkFun is all about open. Whether sharing the pcb design files for our products or posting pictures from the office on flickr, we're pretty open about what it's like to work here. Today we'd like to share with you a cease and desist letter we received from SPARC Industries. Here's a link to SPARC on wikipedia in case you don't know who SPARC is.

SPARC Industries' attorneys seem to think SPARC looks and sounds an awful lot like SparkFun. Tuesday morning we received a cease and desist letter from K&L Gates law firm. Amongst other things they demand that we "immediately take steps to transfer the sparkfun.com domain name to [SPARC International]." Right. Let me just find where I put that password.

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Letter: "Because the dominant portion of the SparkFun mark, namely, SPARK, is phonetically identical and nearly visually identical to SI's SPARC mark, and because it is used in connection with identical goods, we believe confusion is likely to occur among the relevant purchasing group."

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WTF??? Is phonetics now trademarkable too?