Intellectual Property on preamp designs/builds

Hi,

I was wondering how intellectual property is held on a preamp design. For instance,

lets say I wanted to build a chineve and make it commercially available, where is the IP held?

On the PCB?
On the individual components?
On the way they interconnect?

so, if I switch a few components, is it a new iteration and free of IP?
If I grab ideas from a neve preamp and add an SSL preamp idea, have I broken 2 IPs?
Are any of the classic Preamps out of IP?

Perhaps someone would be kind enough to not just answer the question, but maybe help me ask the right ones?

thanks gents/ladies.

pureaudiouk said:

Hi,

I was wondering how intellectual property is held on a preamp design. For instance,

lets say I wanted to build a chineve and make it commercially available, where is the IP held?

On the PCB?
On the individual components?
On the way they interconnect?

Click to expand...

It all depends on whether there is any IP in these or other items and also on whether it is protected and also on what part of the world you inhabit and last but not least on whether the owner of the IP wants to protect it (and pursue infringers).

There can be IP in any of the items you mentioned but you cannot tell just by looking.

Cheers

Ian

As long as there is no patent on the circuit, you are free to do with it whatever you want. Which you in general can assume there is not. There is no further protection. Protected by copyright are only the drawing of a circuit (the way components are arranged on the piece of paper) or a pcb layout (make your own layout and you're good).

I think we already had several threads on that topic, you will find it if you search.

And of course there's often also trademarking/ copyrighting on logo's/ brandnames/ modelnames, so you want to steer clear of trying to make any use of those.