You're trying to understand the wrong thing. Understand the cost of a global trademark fight vs. the cost of rebranding.

Think of it like a terrorist organization occupying a town and them declaring themselves a new country. The original manufacturer has the trademark in their locale. They were also the primary manufacturer of all branded products, and according to the article, had many folks sign a letter where they would agree to only by arduino products from said manufacturer.

That is sort of like holding the town hostage with a bunch of guns.

From the sequence of events it does not seem like this was an "unplanned" event by Arduino SRL. It will be interesting to see what happens next after the Genuino brand starts getting pushed.

> had many folks sign a letter where they would agree to only by arduino products from said manufacturer.

That's really the part I'm stunned about. How did they get leverage to get distributors to sign that? The article said "or pay a fine", how is that legal?

They probably don't but who knows. However, now they can move forward and away from their former POS partner.

You mean that the factory that was building the Arduinos just took over the brand?

From the article: "Much of 2015 has seen the open-source board maker defending itself from its former manufacturing partner, which recently claimed ownership of the brand, launched its own Arduino product line and website, and has worked to bar distributors from buying Arduino products from other manufacturers."

Smart Projects Srl actually trademarked Arduino back in... 2008 I think? Before the American organization claiming to be the real Arduino even existed, in any case, and they've publicly stated they knew about that trademark all along and chose not to fight it.

Yes, I saw that, but does "manufacturing partner" mean "factory"?

Pretty much, yes.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino#Legal_dispute

  At the end of 2008, Gianluca Martino's company, Smart Projects,
  registered the Arduino trademark in Italy and kept this a secret from the
  other co-founders for about two years. This was revealed when the
  Arduino company tried to register the trademark in other areas of the
  world (they originally registered only in the US), and discovered that it
  was already registered in Italy. Negotiations with Gianluca and his
  company to bring the trademark under control of the original Arduino
  company were not successful, and in 2014 Smart Projects began refusing to
  pay royalties. Smart Projects appointed a new CEO, Mr. Musto, who
  renamed the company to Arduino SRL and created a website named
  arduino.org, copying the graphics and layout of the original Arduino.cc.
  This resulted in a rift in the Arduino development team, and although all
  Arduino boards are still available to consumers, and the designs are
  open source, the implications of this are uncertain.

Oh wow, that's super dodgy.

I might be misreading this, but I think the factory is System Elettronica, owned by Ludovico Apruzzese. http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/2013/03/15/a-visit-to-the-a...