Precisely.
Scott Deyo, if you want to donate an additional 20% to E-M I'm happy to pay the extra, but the terms "royalty" and even "surcharge" and "licensing fee" have specific meaning in relation to copyright and patent law. And the law is very clear.
From what I understand, Thomas White is the designer of the elliptical panel and as such, only he has claim to royalties for use of the panel design. I have assumed Mr. White was making his excellent design available through the goodness of his heart and in light of a sense of community. But if he wanted a royalty, I'd be happy to pay - he deserves it.
As Jason said and Scott Juskiw re-iterated, when we bought the circuit board, we bought the right to build it and use it. Plain and simple. Again, the law is crystal clear.
Any one of us can make a panel for the circuit and even sell copies to our friends and profit by their sale and not owe any "royalties" to anyone else on our own panel design. The suggestion is ridiculous.
As a songwriter, copyright law is near and dear to my heart after all, but I'm very puzzled by this. It's almost as if someone is implying I'd owe a payment to Chris Martin for using one of his company's guitars in the process of writing a song. The guitar and the song are two separate entities entirely - not unlike the PCB and the front panel. I mean really!
And the weird thing is that the PCB is virtually useless without a Front Panel and so what possible good could come to E-M from anything that might stifle panel production? It severely diminishes the usefulness and therefore the value of the PCB.
I think E-M's great but this has no legal basis and is wrong-headed besides.
But again, if you want to make the donation to E-M, that's your business and I'm happy to support your decision to do so. Let's just be clear about it.
Bill
--- In ModularSynthPanels@yahoogroups.com, Jason Proctor <jason@...> wrote:
>
> btw, the rights are on the circuit, schematic, etc, ie the design.
>
> i can produce panels for any design in the world i choose without
> paying a cent in royalties.
>
> note people making cases and stuff for ipods/iphones etc. same thing IMHO.
>