kambo said:go.....
Sometimes, its best to take a step back and count to ten. The internet provides ample opportunity for that, since theres no time-limit on (or requirement for) an answer.
Be well.
Gustav
kambo said:go.....
abbey road d enfer said:The "personal use" argument is moot. I knew a guy who made near-perfect copies of LP Standard, down to the logo. Under "popular" demand, he started selling them. The persons he sold them to knew well they were copies, but they got tempted, and started selling them and passing them as authentic.
Do you know most forgers in the art business started making them as homages, butsoon someone realised the potential profit and convinced them to start criminal activity?
Not to be more contrary than usual, there are fair use exceptions worth noting even with patented technology. The whole premise of the patent system is that you trade publication of your invention to advance the art in return for exclusive "commercial" use for a finite time period. It is not expected that nobody will melt solder for 2 decades or so waiting for your invention to expire so "experimental use" is allowed, as long as you are doing this to learn and advance the technology and not for commercial gain that injures the patent holder.kambo said:abbey road d enfer said:The "personal use" argument is moot. I knew a guy who made near-perfect copies of LP Standard, down to the logo. Under "popular" demand, he started selling them. The persons he sold them to knew well they were copies, but they got tempted, and started selling them and passing them as authentic.
Do you know most forgers in the art business started making them as homages, butsoon someone realised the potential profit and convinced them to start criminal activity?
The "personal use" argument is moot. : it sure is...
to me, if u are making music for fun, have a home studio
for fun ,not doing anything commercial, is personal use.
is this case building a clone with exact near specs and logo, is like model making... great fun.
but, if u are making money, even from ur bedroom studio, is not personal use anymore.
slapping a logo or not doesnt change a thing for me...
JohnRoberts said:Of course copying a logo/trademark is just wrong.
is it also illegal, or unlawful (besides business ) ?
Yes the ugly reality is that patents are only a license to sue, not winning some lottery. There is some government help (enforcement) involved when container loads full of counterfeit products get imported into the country where the patent is valid, but managing that requires good inside information about the IP misuse.ruffrecords said:Just to take the fair use idea a stage further with regard to patents it is important to remember that the idea of patents is to grant commercial advantage for innovation. Infringing a patent is not unlawful (it is not a criminal offence). It is a civil tort or a wrong doing and the patent owner can sue in the civil court for damages. If someone copies a patented idea but there is no commercial gain then the plaintiff is unlikely to sue because the court will want him to demonstrate the commercial advantage.
Yes large companies like to accumulate a portfolio of patents, but primarily to defend their products. The strategy you mentioned of a latecomer to the technology accumulating a bunch of improvement patents was practiced widely by the Japanese to gain access to western technology they did not pioneer. An improvement patent does not give you right to use the basic technology, but enough valuable improvement patents could be horse-traded with the original technology owner in a cross-license arrangement.In the consumer electronics arena, patents are bread and butter and are basically a hand of cards that let you play at the patent poker table. To give an example, many years ago I worked for a company that developed and sold a specific type of product. They developed an electronic version but were sued by a competitor for infringement of a patent and had to withdraw the product in one particular market. We were engaged to develop a new range of products for them which avoided their competitors patents and at the same time created a portfolio of patents for the client. A lot of this work involved openly buying competitors products and reverse engineering them with particular reference to the competitor's patents so we could understand them and either circumvent of improve upon them. This is standard practice.
While I was working at Peavey I would often argue against pursuing and/or renewing patents in so many smaller foreign countries that make up such a small fraction of the market. The cost/benefit of having the right to sue in some distant land, over a small market share is minimal. As long as you gain patent protection in the major world markets, the large competitors will not develop a counterfeit product just to sell in a fraction of the world.Bottom line is that a few years later they were invited ,by the same competitor that had sued them, to meet to discuss patent cross licencing - in other words sharing each others patents.
This mean that, apart from the odd litigious bully, most big companies will not worry about an individual copying their electronics as long as you don't attempt to sell it .
Copyright and trademark are indeed a different class of IP. There is no knowledge involved to share and advance the world's knowledge for the good of all. Trademarks instead are more a matter of accumulated good will associated with a brand, that others may dishonestly try to claim as their own for commercial advantage.For some unfathomable reason, logos seem to be a whole different ball game.
Cheers
Ian
weiss said:Is this international law? Or are there differences between countries?
kambo said:Sahib, good to c u back
busy working on my VST remote for my RudeTube, and STA
Rocinante said:Wow berringeer has stuff on Volker for cloning things. Now that's Irony. I should start to put belringer and other likewise logos on my diy from now on.
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