[sdiy] Legal issues of cloning

[rsdio at sounds.wa.com]

Girts,

I am no lawyer, but I think that the biggest problem would be using  
the trademarked names when referring to a clone. CS-80 and TR-909  
might still be trademarked, even if any patents on the circuits have  
expired. And a clone company certainly cannot use names like Yamaha,  
Roland, or ARP to promote their product.

Of course, Moog sued ARP over the ladder filter, but I assume that  
any patent on the ladder VCF has now expired. It's tough finding all  
the patents, though.

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting


On Oct 6, 2013, at 00:37, GGG wrote:
> 	There are lot of classical synth clones arround, available as DIY
> kits - I've built TR909, Polivoks VCF, CS-80 VCF, there are active
> discussions on ARP 2600 clone KIT, about to be on sale.
> 	I wonder, what are the legal issues of cloning synths? What's a
> procedure of getting permission (I doubt, it's easy to get a  
> permissoin from
> producers , like Korg or Yamaha, just because of hudge scale of  
> companies
> and beurocracy and Polivoks is dead end at all). If a developer of  
> the clone
> adds some sigificant upgrades to the original schematics - is this  
> still
> considered as a direct clone, or what's a degree of upgrades, one  
> should
> add?