on-topic: When is a copy a copy?

To clarify the question with that in mind, what I wished to know was were all the different versions by various manufacturers considered significantly different enough from the others that no one particular design was considered to be infringing on what would now be called a "design copyright" of some other manufacturers design.

My guess is that nobody much cared one way or the other at the time, the manufacturers were mostly concerned about about making as much money as cheaply as they could and litigation would've been thought a waste of time. But I am not sure.

"copy" .. ? There are many variants of the hard drive Mobile Rack (that the HD carrying tray handles), for roughly 10 years (long before Kingwin became a prominent vendor). There were at least three vendors that functionally did the same thing, but were mechanically different from each other and so incompatible. Each had their own (Chinese) patent and two (except mechanically) were obvious COPIES. Take a PCB from one, and reverse the artwork patterns, back/front; wa-lah.. a "new" patent".

Schools her in the US that set up computer labs got side-swiped when the had to buy more for a larger lab - - and the vendor was out of business! Thousands of dollars of mobile racks had to be tossed and new ones bought due to the incompatibility.

KIngwin kept compatibility while changing mechanical (and electrical) design.

So there s "copy", a true EXACT clone, an almost clone (made in China for phun and prophet), and something billed as a "copy" but ain't.

Take are how you sling that word...

You should be reminded that IBM released the schematics and software listing(s).

** As there are no patents involved, dissimilar looking radios with broadly similar internals in no way infringe against each other. AFAIK, "design copyright" requires the two items to look similar.

Problems arise when one maker clearly copies the appearance AND internal circuitry of another as then passes it off as being their own design - like Behringer did.

Long as the earlier product appears to be an original design, the maker and other people are entitled to point out the apparent "plaigerism".

..... Phil

Audio product design seems like a particularly unpleasant business to be in whether you're small or big time. If you're small-time someone will copy your stuff and then beat you down in court if you challenge them. If you're big-time you'll get accused of "ripping off" old designs even in the cases when they aren't strictly copies - because old designs/"vintage" sound are what the consumer demands.

Probably easier to build flat-screen TVs or cell phones, nobody seems to care that they all look alike.

or to

fferent tube line ups and numbers.

There is no such thing as "design copyright". Copyright exists to protect "original works of authorship" which include "poems, theses, fictional char acters plays and other literary works, motion pictures, choreography, music al compositions, sound recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photogr aphs, computer software, radio and television broadcasts, and industrial de signs". Most important to this issue is that "copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves". Th e electronic details of a radio design are the underlying ideas and not pro tected, while the shape, color, or knob placement would be part of the "ind ustrial design" which is protected under copyright.

Rather than learning about the various forms of protection for IP, you seem to want to invent things that aren't real.

Rick C.

Publishing books does not invalidate a copyright? I don't recall if the sc hematics were copyrighted (wouldn't matter either way though) but I want to say the code listings were copyrighted (again doesn't matter since the bin ary was copyrighted). IBM *did* enforce copyright on the BIOS so others ha d to reinvent that wheel.

Rick C.

You need to get out more often. Apple successfully sued Samsung for making cell phone corners "rounded".

Rick C.

Except people and corporations file lawsuits or threaten to do so over things that "aren't real" all the time because what's "real" or not is finally determined by the lawyers, courts and juries.

There are many products outside the audio world that look superficially alike to me, like microwave ovens. Same shape, same color, same control position. If someone takes a product like the cable tester situation in the article I linked and keeps the control and form factor layout the same but changes the labeling and color scheme is that sufficient to avoid infringing an "industrial design" copyright (which I called a "design copyright")? It's clearly now not _exactly_ the same design.

Whether it did or not would finally be a jury's subjective opinion.

I don't really keep up much with what Apple is doing, that's true. I'm guessing there was probably more nuance to the case than that as there are many cell phones with corners that could be generally described as "rounded" and I doubt Apple or Samsung were the first to make a phone that fit that description.

What is your point?

Rick C.

to

king cell phone corners "rounded".

Sorry, Apple has a patent on rounding the corners of a cell phone. I belie ve I read they also have a patent on something like "an array of icons". Y ep, that's right. I would have attacked the patent as being patently obvious, but that is where the courts come in and no one can predict what the courts will decide.

Rick C.

The post was to foster discussion. And here we are, having a discussion. Mission accomplished!

A discussion explaining your misunderstanding of IP protection, yes.

Rick C.

What software is required to manufacture a product that could be called a "PC clone" other than the BIOS? There were several operating systems available at the time that the machine could run it didn't have to load IBM PC DOS.

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e schematics were copyrighted (wouldn't matter either way though) but I wan t to say the code listings were copyrighted (again doesn't matter since the binary was copyrighted). IBM *did* enforce copyright on the BIOS so other s had to reinvent that wheel.

Yeah, what's your point? DOS wasn't IBM,s to enforce any IP rights. MS-DO S belonged to MS.

A PC clone consists of the motherboard which at that time was a custom desi gn potentially an electrical copy of the IBM machine (copying the PCB artwo rk would be an IP violation). They had to maintain nearly identical circui try because there was no "specification" on the bus. You would only be ass ured of compatibility if you used the same parts in the same way. This was mostly TTL remember.

The case and other components were not essential to compatibility or were b ought from other suppliers such as the floppy drives.

So to maximize compatibility you had to copy IBM's electrical design and cr eate your own BIOS to be functionally compatible.

Rick C.

Discussion above was talking about "software listings" and source code and whether they were copyrighted or not, and I wasn't clear what particular piece of software was under discussion. The BIOS is all you need to make what I would call a "clone." IBM published the full source code of the BIOS in the technical manual but whether the source code could be copyrighted or not depends on whether they had done it prior to the listing being published.

I don't know exactly how it went down at the time (I was learning to tie my shoes around then probably) but I don't think even a clean-room re-implementation of a BIOS for a particular set of hardware could necessarily be total indemnification against a lawsuit. You can copyright an "API" or set of function calls that manipulate hardware to do certain things. For the clone to be fully compatible they all have to work more-or-less the same way, copyright applies to derivative works as well, and if the clean-room set of "API" calls all behave exactly the same way as the original source it might be a tough sell to claim it was not a derivative work of some fashion.

Not an uncommon problem it seems but I surely never claimed to be an expert in the field.

You can't copyright functionality. You can copyright a specific work, but you can't copyright doing a given job. As to "API" as IP, I believe that w ould only apply to publishing the API, not implementing it. The most basic issue in copyright is that it does not apply to ideas, only expression. I f your code is not the same, it can do the same thing without violation.

You need to learn about the *many* cases of the use of a Chinese wall to cr eate a functional specification which hardware and software are designed to specifically to prevent any claims of copyright violation. Do some readin g on AMD vs. Intel regarding the '386 and '486 designs. The microcode is p rotected just like the BIOS binary, but if you don't copy that it's not a v iolation of copyright.

One example of what was protected was the instruction symbols for the 8080 CPU. Zilog had to produce their own symbols, so the Z80 assembly language is different even though the opcodes are a superset. Ideas, vs. expression .

This has been hammered enough here. Go read a little and get an education instead of expecting to be spoon fed. You have enough info to dig a little on your own now.

Rick C.