Copyrights for circuits

[Antti Huovilainen]

On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Paul Maddox wrote:

> a fortune on R&D... What would be interesting is to see the 
> schematic, and just HOW close it is to Jurgens... think about it
> if he's nicked the concept thats almost acceptable (you all pinch 
> moog filters/arp/filters/vco's/etc) if he's nicked the whole circuit
> then there  is a copyright issue, either that or a potential job

IANAL so don't hang me for this.
If I'm correct, copyright only covers the specific implementation. So if
one were to change some values etc it wouldn't be against the law
(otherwise pretty much everyone using tomg's VCO5 would be infringing
National Semiconductor's copyright as the circuit is almost identical with
the application notes). Now if the circuit was patented, it would be a
whole another thing.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Antti,
who is counting on his electronics lab course teacher being clueless about
WWW.

- Never let school interfere with your education -