[sdiy] Legal issues of cloning

[Terry Shultz]

FM patents were from Stanford Univ. / John Chowning and licensed to Yamaha .

Yamaha was one of the few that licensed rather than invent the IP.

Terry

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 6, 2013, at 2:59 AM, Tom Wiltshire <tom at electricdruid.net> wrote:
> 
> I've read around this topic a bit with respect to cloning of stomp boxes. Most of the famous old pedals are now available in any number of "boutique" versions. The position with clones seems to be based on what you *can* protect:
> 
> 1) Schematics can be copyrighted. You can't copy someone else's copyrighted schematic. Draw your own.
> 
> 2) Product and company names can be trademarked. You can't use "Roland Jupiter" for your new clone. Hence "xoxBox" and similar.
> 
> 3) Certain innovative aspects of a circuit could be patented. For stomp boxes this is extremely rare. For synths, the Moog filter is the most famous example, but Yamaha's FM patent would be another. But patents lapse eventually.
> 
> Since none of these three legal protections cover the actual circuit itself, it's very difficult to prevent anyone cloning your circuit. Since stomp boxes are simple enough to trace out the whole thing and measure values, this is exactly what happens. Synths are more complicated, and that provides some protection. The best protection of all is to include a custom chip/ASIC/FPGA or uP with custom software in the design. No-one has cloned the DX7's hardware, despite the patent having expired, although there are software clones that would infringe it if it were still acting.
> 
> So if you can copy the circuit, and there's no patent in force, and you don't use anyone's trademark, you can do it and no-one really has any legal recourse.
> 
> Of course, whether this is the *right* thing to do is a different discussion. In the case of long-dead products (particularly of long-dead manufacturers) I don't have a problem with it. If people start cloning my latest module idea whilst I'm still trying to sell it, I might feel rather differently.
> 
> HTH,
> Tom
> 
> 
>> On 6 Oct 2013, at 09:06, rsdio at sounds.wa.com wrote:
>> 
>> 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?
>> 
>> 
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