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Re: Looperlative Patents

Hmm... Kim - you make a compelling case for buying one of these bad boys
QUICKLY!  :-)


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kim Flint" <kflint@loopers-delight.com>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 4:53 PM
Subject: Re: Looperlative Too Expensive?


> At 01:03 PM 1/29/2006, Kevin 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.
>
> Interestingly, while many basic ideas about looping are not patented,
> multi-track looping and some methods for implementing and controlling
> multi-track loopers are patented.
>
> Electrix ran into trouble with this for the Repeater.
>
> I'm curious to know how some of these multi-track looper products (both
> hardware and software) and their respective developers are dealing with
> those patents. Are they making specific design choices to avoid 
>infringing
> the patents? Are they licensing the technology from the original 
>inventor?
> Or are they unaware of the patents and just running blind into a big
problem?
>
> My guess is the latter...
>
> kim
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
> kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com
>