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Combined DigiKey order tomorrow

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dipmicro

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I am doing another combined DigiKey order tomorrow (every Monday) and do not have enough participants to cover the shipping. DigiKey seems like great source of electronic parts and I love it, but why nobody bothers?
 
dipmicro said:
I am doing another combined DigiKey order tomorrow (every Monday) and do not have enough participants to cover the shipping. DigiKey seems like great source of electronic parts and I love it, but why nobody bothers?
Do I understand that you are buying for all of Canada, or only the folks in your local area?
 
i've got a few questions, related to your website rather than some combined Canadian order

How do you run queries against and scrape information from the Digikey website? Can I see the scripts?

I'm writing a little MS Access app to manage my growing parts collection, and Digi is a vendor a buy a lot from - it would be nice to just enter a part number and have the rest loaded from the website.
 
Papabravo said:
Do I understand that you are buying for all of Canada, or only the folks in your local area?

This is meant for US and Canadians but if someone orders from Europe I will send it to them. Would like this to be quite regular and started pretty aggresively with weekly period but need at least $130 CAD in the pool to cover my cost with the order not counting my time.

3v0 said:
Mouser is less expensive and has no min order.

Mouser is a sucker for shipping and customs to Canada. Although electronic parts have no import duties in Canada, brokers skin you alive charging $29 for 3-5 minutes of their time.

Digikey clears Canadian orders in bulk so they can offer pretty much same prices as in US. Nice thing is that they have an agreement with Purolator (now a subdivision of CanadaPost) and can offer next day flat rate shipping. So when I place an order by 8pm Monday, it usually shows up around 3pm Tuesday and in the evening I can start distributing the shipments.

3v0 said:

3v0, do they really have customs charges in US for stuff from Canada? Did you ended up paying customs for Inchworm? I always thought customs import charges and brokerage fees are Canadian inventions ;)

Seems that at the place where I work they like DigiKey too. So nobody in the hobby world likes to order from DigiKey?
 
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justDIY said:
How do you run queries against and scrape information from the Digikey website? Can I see the scripts?

The PHP script reads the DigiKey page and finds information using regular expressions. It finds available quantity, prices and breaks and then uses it to be added to my shopping cart.

If MS Access supports RegEx, you should have no problem reusing it. I will send it to you on email later on, send me the PM with address.
 
Trademark infrigement?

Someone presenting as a lawyer representing DigiKey sent me an email with request to remove DigiKey trademarks and scraps of their information from my website (so much for your spreadsheet justDIY).

I will have to remove all digikey trademarks. The letter names trademarks 1487965, 1900329, 2734969. They trademarked DIGI-KEY and I wonder if the word DIGIKEY would be still an infrigement?

Maybe I can rename the page to DK Pooling and that could allow me to keep my sales of $72.50 a week out of which I have absolutely no profit, sometimes even loss.
 
You would think that they would be happy to people buy their product. Lawyers. Do you suppose the are thinking that you are buying Futerlec knock offs and selling them as parts ordered for Digikey? Like that would be worth the effort. More likely the company lawyers will use you as a a tick on the counter that justifies their existence.

Down with lawyers.
 
dipmicro said:
I will have to remove all digikey trademarks. The letter names trademarks 1487965, 1900329, 2734969. They trademarked DIGI-KEY and I wonder if the word DIGIKEY would be still an infrigement?

From what I understand, Digi-Key and DigiKey would be viewed the same. That is, the hyphen makes no difference in that trademark. This is not intended as legal advice, simply a layperson's opinion based on a similar situation involving the J-B Weld trademark (i.e., removing the hyphen was judged insufficient change to avoid trademark infringement). It is also possible that Digi-Key has already trademarked both versions.

John
 
dipmicro said:
I will have to remove all digikey trademarks. The letter names trademarks 1487965, 1900329, 2734969. They trademarked DIGI-KEY and I wonder if the word DIGIKEY would be still an infrigement?

I didn't think you could trademark a number? - which is why Intel used Pentium instead of 586.
 
3v0 said:
You would think that they would be happy to people buy their product. Lawyers. Do you suppose the are thinking that you are buying Futerlec knock offs and selling them as parts ordered for Digikey?

We do not even repackage, say if two people would order the same P/N and I could qualify for price break, they get ordered as separate lines.

What puzzles me that I am actually bringing their parts to community that would normally go for Futurlec knock-ofs because of S/H. One wonders.

They were nice enough to give me 10 days to perform corrective action. IMHO, if we were several mil corporation, they would serve me the notice of the damage claim instead. They have nothing to get from me, I am just a guy with two kids and a mortgage ;)

I think DigiKey probably spent more on the lawyer than the value of the parts I ordered for my customers.

jpanhalt said:
From what I understand, Digi-Key and DigiKey would be viewed the same.

I think that is a reasonable assumption.

Nigel said:
I didn't think you could trademark a number?

Thos are just numbers of trademarks I need to comply with. You can look them up on US patent office website.
 
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why should you worry about the US patent office - I was under the impression you're a Canadian citizen?

I'm no lawyer, but if I got some email from someone claiming to be someone, I'd just ignore it. If they're serious, they'll retain a Canadian firm to send you a type written letter via postal mail.

You can't blame lawyers for everything... the world is full of greedy litigious people that are quick to hire lawyers - they are the ones to blame
 
Copyright laws require the holder to defend the copyright at all times. If the copyright holder "lets it slide" it will set a president and the brand will eventually fall into the public domain.
 
justDIY said:
why should you worry about the US patent office - I was under the impression you're a Canadian citizen?

I'm no lawyer, but if I got some email from someone claiming to be someone, I'd just ignore it. If they're serious, they'll retain a Canadian firm to send you a type written letter via postal mail.

You don't have to be a lawyer to know not to steal.

If you have ordered from DigiKey or used their on-line catalog, then you have agreed to this (pay particular attention to paragraph 2):

**broken link removed**

I would have serious reservations about trusting or dealing with any entity that would recommend simply ignoring that agreement after having entered into it. Violation of DigiKey's intellectual property and tradmarks is stealing. Sure, it is the owner's responsibility to protect its property, and you can be pretty sure DigiKey will protect its property.

My interpretation of a letter such as you received is not that DigiKey is bluffing and not serious, but rather that it was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for a first offense. John
 
jpanhalt said:
You don't have to be a lawyer to know not to steal.

I think stealing is too harsh word, it was naivety in this case ;) Todays world is so full of legal babble and fineprints that many people may find themselves in trouble without bad intentions. Someone says a joke and they get harrasment charge. Others utter a word not knowing a bully-corp holds trademark for and they find themelves in a ...

Maybe someone should start trade-marking body positions too, like sitting in front of TV - and royalties will just roll in ;)
 
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dipmicro,

Well I do agree with you that the world is full of legal babble. It's all CYA. You know, a screwdriver may cause injury or death, blisters, or even warts :) .

Have you tried contacting DigiKey, explaining what you want to do (maybe pointing out the advantages to it), and offered to pay for a license? It's likely DigiKey will reply that it is not worth its time. In which case, you have lost nothing but the time to write a letter. On the other hand, it just may have a standard trademark and confidentiality form that you could agree to, pay a nominal fee (if any), and continue as you had been doing. Good luck. John
 
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