[sdiy] cloning, copying, copyrights

[Dan Snazelle]

one question i have is this

lets say you are going to sell a product that contains an oscillator. the most commonly seen vco seems to tie back to the Electronotes VCO. tons of people have done variations and added or subtracted from the design. do i need to get ALL of their permission to use the design? is it enough to do a credit of bernie hutchins?

and is credit simply getting permission and saying you used a design or do you have to pay a fee?

another thing i wonder about-what if you get a design out of a book or a magazine (say an old practical electronics or nuts and volts project) or a out of a cookbook...if you redraw it, dont you have every right to use it since you bought it as an educational product (especially in the case of cookbooks and textbooks)??? i mean you might want to credit it as well but do engineers credit textbooks every time they design something?

these are just questions. its an odd situation since many of the circuits we are inspired by are inspired by other designs and those by other designs. synth diy seems very rooted in classic designs..many of which can be found in old books.

and what about APP NOTES-those are 100% fair game right???


thanks
















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----------------------------------------
> From: richard at skydancer.com
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] cloning, copying, copyrights
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:09:38 +0100
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> 
> 
> On 29 Jul 2008, at 11:20, Tom Wiltshire wrote:
> 
>> That was my understanding of the situation too. You can only  
>> copyright a PCB artwork or a schematic, so the sharing of original  
>> schematics (although widespread) isn't legal, but the cloning of a  
>> circuit by redrawing the schematic and making a new board design is  
>> fine.
> 
> This assumes the circuit includes no patented elements, which is a  
> risky proposition, because many circuits do.
> 
> But I think in practice it rarely matters. The hobby vintage market  
> is tiny and not very interesting to the big manufacturers. ARP, Moog  
> and Sequential are long gone as legal entities, and - unless anyone  
> knows different - there are no remaining rights on those circuits,  
> and no one likely or willing to prosecute for their use.
> 
> If Korg, Roland et al cared about use of (e.g.) the MS-20 or TB303  
> filter topology, they'd have prosecuted by now. The fact that they  
> haven't suggests that either they don't know about the hobby market  
> or they don't care.
> 
> If I started making reasonable runs of a direct VCS3 clone the  
> remains of EMS would complain. But the costs vs the benefits mean  
> that older circuits aren't worth producing in production quantities  
> unless you're going for the very high end collector/hobbyist/ 
> professional market and charging accordingly. (E.g. Club of the Knobs  
> Moog modular clones.)
> 
>> It would certainly be polite (but not legally required) to give  
>> credit were it is due. Presenting someone else's work as your own  
>> is a damn dirty trick in pretty much everyone's head!
> 
> Behringer do it all the time.
> 
> Sometimes they get sued. Sometimes they don't.
> 
> Richard
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