Re: Looperlative Too Expensive?

[Tom Ritchford <tom@swirly.com>]

On 1/29/06, Kevin <kevin@thenettles.com> wrote:
>
> >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.

I'm well aware of all this... but I don't see why this is relevant to
my argument.

As I said, if Behringer copied the Looperlative's software, it would
be a copyright violation.  There isn't much preventing them from
copying the hardware except conceivably patents.

--
     /t

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