And as the fact that Arduino LLC apparently let Smart Projects file a trademark, and then stop payments, without doing much about it, I wonder how the court view that. Technically, Smart Projects own the trademark, and have been selling "Arduino" boards without a legal challenge by the LLC until now. I would have expected cease and desist letters to everyone selling "illegal marked" boards. Arduino LLC are obviously amateurs, and it shows.
The interesting thing here is that Smart Projects put on their very own packaging "manufactured under license to Arduino LLC", and a photo is in the court papers.
But yes, Arduino LLC didn't do enough to control or stop this guy, and seems to have had a very laissez-faire attitude until they finally sued, amateur hour indeed.
Then I additionally discovered the history of Wiring and Arduino - Barragan's and other's work, and there are some unanswered questions over Banzi's role as supervisor, then later exploiting the student's work.
On the surface it seems that it was open source, so Massimo was certainly within his rights to go and form a company to build a market from that. And they have always attributed Wiring et.al as is expected.
I guess the only question is here is why (if he didn't) invite the Wiring guy to join the party.
It's because there is now a valuable business, that the founders can afford a legal fight.
They don't have the money to win it unless the defendant folds or runs out of money.
In the meantime, even according to Banzi, we should pursue "business as usual".
I think a lot of people won't want to support either side now and will move to just buying clones.