Re: Looperlative Too Expensive?

[Kevin <kevin@TheNettles.com>]

>Tom Ritchford wrote:
>>>If I was Bob, at this price point I would be worried about a pirate
>>>like Behringer moving in.
>>the advantage to a heavily-software item like the looperlative is that
>>Behringer would have to copy the software.  That would be hard to do
>>without making it provably a copyright violation (rather than just a
>>clone...)

Allow me to correct a possible misperception here about intellectual 
property (IP) law.  Patents protect ideas, copyright protects the 
expression of those ideas.  I can copy an idea if there is no patent 
protecting it. Copyright does not protect ideas.  If I rip  a copy of 
the firmware from a product and then put that in my product I am 
violating copyright or possibly the product license.  A product 
license is a contract between the seller and the buyer.

So provided that the ideas in the EDP were not protected by patent, 
Behringer could copy all the ideas, except possibly the user 
interface.  Under US patent law, if an idea hasn't been patented 
within a year of the idea being made publicly available, then it 
can't be patented.

Cheers,
Kevin
www.TheNettles.com