Actually no, in fact it's counterproductive. That's a mindless aphorism thrown about to deflect blame from the actual people responsible for decisions, similar to "companies are legally required to maximize profit".
Some people try to fix the system. Some people try to do good within the system. Some people do both. Don't shit on someone's parade because you don't feel they didn't do enough, otherwise you alienate your allies.
But your original comment is orthogonal to working within the system. Saying that companies have to "protect their trademarks or lose them" is indeed true in the strict legal sense. But a company could legally "protect" their trademark by issuing yearly licenses for token compensation for products that they consider different enough, but the law might not.
By taking the strict legal definition out of its narrow context, you imply that a company has no choice but to act a certain way, when in fact there are specific people responsible for its behavior. We should not allow these people abdicate their reasoning by promoting the idea that the expected corporate action is the only possible course.
Nope. This is known as "naked licensing",and can lead to loss of the mark.
This is trademark law 101, not a 'mindless aphorism.' Any trademark lawyer will tell you that firms need to police the use of their marks if they wish to courts to enforce their rights in the mark. What basis do you have for claiming otherwise?
I could just as easily argue that the fault for the waste here lies with the Chinese exporter who refuses to take back the unwanted product which infringes on someone else's trade dress. I don't buy the argument about import taxes making it too expensive, this is what entrepots are for.
We hear of plenty of similar cases where some firm sends a C&D to a barely related firm, and a common refrain is that the first firm simply must defend their trademark in such a manner, leaving no room for judgment. I am pointing out that this is patently false.
No, Fluke figured $30k was a cheap way to bury the PR issue and not have Sparkfun selling Fluke knock-offs.
We hear of plenty of similar cases where some firm sends a C&D to a barely related firm
It's not similar if they're barely related.
I personally don't think this meter directly competes with Fluke - Sparkfun has lots of great things, but test equipment is not among them. But we can agree to disagree about this, and my point stands irrespective of it - Companies, despite being legally compelled to churn on anything remotely related to their trademark, can choose to protect their marks from erosion in amicable ways. Thus, companies can and should be judged for the actions they do take.
The reason I called the original statement an 'aphorism' is because it's indeed true in a sense, but its simplicity hides the entirety of the situation. It's part of a larger trend of people abdicating individual reason and responsibility, and passing the decision making to a nebulous non-entity ("everyone else is doing it.."). If a professional job is performed this way, then the value-add of a person is merely a human face, and they should be replaced with a short shell script. Then the actual professional human up the chain can better exercise their own judgment.
But there's no arguing that Sparkfun isn't in direct competition; it's a multimeter, Fluke sells multimeters, the fact that they're not in the same price bracket is beside the point. It's completely rational that Fluke would not want to dilute its mark by allowing an inferior product to go out in the same trade dress, so I don't agree with your notion that licensing it out would be OK and I don't agree with the poster above that a sticker is sufficient. And again, bear in mind that Fluke initiated a trade complaint, but it's CBP that ended up with the goods in a warehouse asking Spark to make the decision to pay for them to be sent back to China or to be destroyed. They have no way of knowing whther they're destined for a cool little company like Sparkfun or some dingy hardware store that's trying to fleece its customers by selling cheap knockoffs.
Really, the issue here is for Sparkfun - trademark searches are free these days, Fluke isn't even seeking any kind of compensation for them, so I don't know what their excuse is for not checking. If they were selling an mp3 player or a coffee mug in the Fluke black-and-yellow trade dress, then yes I'd be for some sort of licensing arrangement, and I agree that those often work out better for the trademark holder as a kind of free advertising.
The truth is they are required to "protect" their trademark, but that doesn't require anything like what their actions were today. It's an almost irrelevant and highly misleading statement to throw into the discussion. Just to give an example, they could easily have arranged with SparkFun to allow the goods through but require a sticker be placed on each item identifying that it is not a Fluke product. That would also protect the trademark. If there is evidence that SparkFun is wilfully antagonistic and uncooperative then destroying products seems like a last resort you might arrive at. But before that there are a million different solutions that don't involve destroying and blocking SparkFun products open to both parties.
Allowing a company to use your trademark without entering an agreement is a bad idea.