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[on:]

I bought a Nano from an online auction site that need not be named (rhymes with "e-pay").  Just before my purchase arrived I got an email, saying in part,

In this case, the listing was removed because the copyright or trademark owner of this product reported that the item may be counterfeit.

Oh well, it arrived the next day.  I loaded the example Blink and Serial sketches, and it works, so I guess I will keep it (sending it back would be more hassle than the $18 that I spent, even if I eventually got the money + return postage back).  I don't know if the alleged "counterfeit" was against the Arduino trademark or the other name on it (Gravitech).

And "e-pay" already has a very similar listing back up, but with a different seller name.

[Reply #1 on:]

I got a similar mailing regarding a MAX232 chip.. but as far as I can see, it's a perfect copy if it is a copy.  Sadly, it's a fact that if someone does something right, ten wankers will line up behind him trying to figure out a way to make a dishonest buck off it.  If someone does something wrong and gets away with it, it's more like fifty wankers.

[Reply #2 on:]

That is my fear of open source stuff. You made something awesome and shared with the rest of the world and some decided to just make copies of them to sell for money, and worse, let you handle the software/hardware/firmware support coming from customers they made money off.

I am thinking of limited open-source for the start instead of letting everything go at the first possible moment and put serial number on those hardware I sell so I don't have to be free customer service for someone making copies and refuses to support technically (do they ever provide support?!).

I got a"mega". I was careful to pick one that has no "arduino' or "mega" on its silver screen but all these ads claim arduino on the title so well...
It's still in its package. I got it from impulsive purchase. I had like $1.5 ebay cash back bucks to spend so I ended up spending that, plus a lot more LOL

[Reply #3 on:]

I'm not sure why you are going to great lengths to avoid saying "eBay".  You didn't buy a counterfeit from eBay.  You bought a device from a seller on eBay.

Being that Arduino is an Open Source design, the idea of "counterfeit" is a grey-area.

If I were you, I would buy an official Arduino to support the work that went into it, while continuing to use the hardware you already purchased.

[Reply #4 on:]

I am thinking of limited open-source for the start instead of letting everything go at the first possible moment and put serial number on those hardware I sell so I don't have to be free customer service for someone making copies and refuses to support technically (do they ever provide support?!).

In the software world, this has been a long debate. But companies such as RedHat have figured out how to make money. I haven't looked at how well they're doing, but if they were losing money hand over fist, I think it would've made Slashdot a few times, or one of the other Linux news sources I follow. RedHat sells support, and also a value-added product. I'm not sure how well something like that meshes with your business model, but part of the deal with Free / Open-source software is that there is "community" support, i.e. web forums and the like. You want more than that, you pay for it. I haven't probed whether this is how, for example, Sparkfun and Adafruit run their forums (you get an account only if you're a customer), but I noticed that when I bought from them, there was an option to create a forum account on their sites. It's also possible to set up mail filters such that mail from registered customers is all that gets through -- you'd need a dedicated product address for that.

[Reply #5 on:]

That's what I do. I created thousands and thousands lines of codes and libraries for my hardware for free, although they work best on my shields. It's hard to get the word out about what I am doing though.