At what point can you call a design your own?

[PenPen]

With all of the hysteria regarding Behringer lately, I thought it would be wise to get a concensus on this. I haven't really put together any real clones yet, I'm mostly interested in making building blocks and learning how to put these together. However, I've put together a couple of designs that I could MAYBE call my own. However, I used other circuits as building blocks.

So the logical thing to say is that its a modified copy. But then again, Marshall was merely a modified copy of Fender, as are most guitars, amps, and really, even pedals. Fuller owes his fame to Ibanez and Dallas-Arbiter, from what I read ZVex SHO is a modified AMZ Mosfet booster, and MANY designs here are modified Fuzz Faces and Rangemasters really. DS-1, Rat, Dist+, are essentially the same type of design, just tweaked in different ways.


So where do you draw the line?

[varialbender]

You don't draw the line, I'd say.
Someone's always gonna push it anyway.
In the end, it's a product. If you can sell it, that's all that matters.
The big concern with Behringer, I think, is more marketing than circuitry.
No one's complaining about Danelectro, because they're not marketed based on the pedals they're copying.
I don't think people generally try to protect circuits. They protect the marketing behind them, like the names and such.

[gtrmac]

Many Behringer products are an obvious ripoff of other companys' stuff and this is why they get a lot of criticism. Fender amp circuits were derived from designs that RCA published freely to help sell tubes. Marshall originally copied the Fender circuits but then started to add their own twists and the two produicts certainly sound different.

You have to use your judgement and it is best in the long run to try and be different in some way IMO.

[PenPen]

Ok, so what I'm getting then, is that if you bend a circuit to your tastes, and its something that others want, making and selling your version of it isn't really a big deal, as long as you don't call it or market it as an existing product?

The big no-no I saw with Behringer was that their pedals LOOKED like Boss and EH pedals. Their phaser casing looked just like the Small Stone. Is that really all there is then? Just put it in a case of your own design? Honestly, I thought that was the easy part, coming up with a new packaging.

If I had a company, no matter how small, I know I'd demand creating a brand image that was my own. How could you want to have a company and be proud when you are seen as simply a copycat? Maybe that's what has me really confused. Even still, sometimes when I think about maybe making a few copies of a circuit I slap together, I always get disappointed and think, "well really, its just like FOO with a modified BAZ and the BAR of a BASH." But again, I think about all of the others out there that put products out that are almost exact copies internally.

I started out picking apart the design of the Rat. I own one and I like it, but I always wanted something just a tad different. I studied many distortion designs, noting where they all differed, learned how distortion is created and tamed, and began putting together something. In the end, the input buffer is different, the gain stage is tweaked, but then there's only a handful of ways to do opamp gain setups, the tone control is a modified stack from another design that I really liked because of its versatility, and the output stage is new. So at this point, I'm thinking, 'hey, I think I can honestly call this my own design". And then the guilt of knowing where it all came from hits, and I'm having internal ethical debates about it.

Sometimes I hate having a conscience....

[vanessa]

If you look at the Arbiter Fuzz Face and look at the Vox Tone Bender you have to ask yourself could Arbiter call the Fuzz Face their own? And without that circuit a good deal of us would not be on this forum or even most of the pedal manufacturers today be in business for that matter.

The list of these blatant rip-offs goes on and on. I have to agree with varialbender about the marketing, but I will add that it goes a step beyond when a company makes their product look almost exact, clones the exact circuit on top off it, then adds insult to injury and haves them produced overseas so cheap as to undercut the originator of the circuit.


Arbiter changed up the circuit. Whoever did over there may have found the Tone Bender circuit in need of changes to taste, liked what they heard and said "Hey others might like this as well". Instead of using the exact enclosure that Vox used they thought up the marketing aspect of using a round mic stand type enclosure and thought it looked like a face, thus the name. Not exactly totally original but not a total rip-off either.

So I guess it is at that point you call it your own and be ready when the s**t  hits the fan...

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

The big no-no I saw with Behringer was that their pedals LOOKED like Boss and EH pedals. Their phaser casing looked just like the Small Stone. Is that really all there is then? Just put it in a case of your own design? Honestly, I thought that was the easy part, coming up with a new packaging.

It's easy to come up with a new package, but if you want to sell a million of everything (and, your sole advantage is price) then anything you can do to to confuse people is to your advantage. Interestingly, for stompboxes, there are laws to stop you making one "look" like that of another company, but nothing to stop you using the same circuit (unless there is a patent involved, and all the patents on the 'classic' stuff ran out years ago..... plus it isn't worth the big$$$ to patent something as small deal as a pedal today anyhow).

In my experience, that are two kinds of stompbox user: the people who wnat to use a box like their hero (and a million others) use, and the type who want somethig 'completely different'. At least 98% are in the first category, so that is why Behringer is trying to copy stuff. The other 2% are my friends & potential customers

[bioroids]

Maybe stompbox design is like rock songwriting: you have a handfull of chords and several ways to connect them, but basically is always the same song. But you can have The Beatles or The Monkeys... 

Luck!

Miguel

[stm]

Maybe stompbox design is like rock songwriting: you have a handfull of chords and several ways to connect them, but basically is always the same song. But you can have The Beatles or The Monkeys... 

Luck!

Miguel

Deja vu!

Yesterday when I was going home I heard in the Radio a song from the Monkeys and a story on how this group appeared as a sort of competition for the Beatles...

Now to the subject: I believe a fair way is to think about what is considerer a copy of a song. In my country if you copy several consecutive bars for the melody / accompainment it is considered a copy of the previous song (I'm not pretty sure of how many bars it is exactly, but it is somewhere between 4 and 8 bars IIRC).

Similarly, If you take a TS-808 and change only the diodes, or the value of some components (for instance, double the capactior at the (-) input of the first op-amp), we are talking about a copy no doubt.  On the other hand, if you replace the tone control circuitry with your own, or a BMP, or whatever then I think it is fair to say you have a design of your own, despite it was based on a prexisting one.

There are so few ways of using OpAmps or transistors to implement a gain stage, relatively speaking, that it makes no sense in considering such building blocks as a feature inherent or exclusive to a particular effect.  In an analog manner, this would be like considering that a G13 chord cannot be used in another song because it was used originally on a previous one (despite you can make a G13 chord in many ways using notes from different octaves, which would be like changing component values for agiven topology).

Regards.

[spudulike]

This has been discussed before and the conclusions were

There is NO legal copyright on a schematic.
There IS legal copyright on a pcb layout.
There IS legal copyright on trade dress (how the pedal looks).

End of story.

[A.S.P.]

there are loads and loads of patent protections
there are serious copyright protections on drawings

a lot of people here walk a very thin line,
and many step over it...

[Ed G.]

This has been discussed before and the conclusions were

There is NO legal copyright on a schematic.
There IS legal copyright on a pcb layout.
There IS legal copyright on trade dress (how the pedal looks).

End of story.

Not quite true, you may be mistaken. The schematic, as a drawing, can be copywrited. Of course someone can just re-draw it and it no longer applies.
The CIRCUIT can't be copywritten, but can be patented. But that's another topic.

[Sir H C]

I look at it this way, if you don't have companies doing R&D and developing new effects then you will be stuck in a rut with no new exciting circuits coming about.  All the fuzz face style circuits are based on a minimal parts count 2 stage amplifier that has been around for quite a while.  I actually was taught that circuit in college and had to do the math for gain, impedances and the rest for it.  And this was for a basic analog design course.

Still there are some original designs out there, mostly to me with phasers.  To call something your own, either it has to be novel (Mutron III), a new way to do something (EH Small Stone), or a very creative mutation of an existing design (Vox Tone Bender Mk2).

[Sir H C]

This has been discussed before and the conclusions were

There is NO legal copyright on a schematic.
There IS legal copyright on a pcb layout.
There IS legal copyright on trade dress (how the pedal looks).

End of story.

Not quite true, you may be mistaken. The schematic, as a drawing, can be copywrited. Of course someone can just re-draw it and it no longer applies.
The CIRCUIT can't be copywritten, but can be patented. But that's another topic.

PCBs can be copyrighted.  I have to assume that, I look at my Mutron Phasor 2 circuit board and it has a copyright symbol on it.  It is afterall a *printed* circuit board.

Even for ICs you can copyright and they have a separate one called a mask copyright (an M in a circle) that is for these.

[vanessa]

This has been discussed before and the conclusions were

There is NO legal copyright on a schematic.
There IS legal copyright on a pcb layout.
There IS legal copyright on trade dress (how the pedal looks).

End of story.

Anything that is drawn and posted freely on the internet would have a hard case in court trying to prove copyright infringement. Even a PCB. If it is up on the internet freely available for people to use as reference, you’re giving up certain rights by allowing people to use your design as a model.

If say you could prove that you design was stolen from a secure safe and a competitor's schematic or PCB looked similar then you would have a case.

[A.S.P.]

If it is up on the internet freely available for people to use as reference, you’re giving up certain rights by allowing people to use your design as a model

he who scans/copies a drawing that someone else drew,
and posts/hosts (=publishes) it on the web
without the (written) consent of the author,
has crossed the border of laws.

[PenPen]

Ok, I read that thread back then. And I'm not concerned about the LEGAL definitions, I understand the differences about the copyright and trademark laws concerning PCBs and schems. I've consulted with my cousin who is a law student on trademark and copyright law regarding guitar designs. That wasn't really what I was asking about. I know legally I could take a tubescreamer or whatever and tweak, rename, make my own PCB layout, create my own packaging design, and sell it. The law lets you get away with more than what I would call ethical.

What I'm grasping at, is where YOU guys draw the line. Ethically. I know everyone here has a different opinion of ethics. Could you box up a, for example, AMZ Muffmaster, call it "Tone on the Range", sell it, and still sleep fine at night?

[A.S.P.]

no. 

[MartyMart]

What I'm grasping at, is where YOU guys draw the line. Ethically. I know everyone here has a different opinion of ethics. Could you box up a, for example, AMZ Muffmaster, call it "Tone on the Range", sell it, and still sleep fine at night?

NO !!
However, if you pasted several "blocks" together and changed several components, add another gain
stage to end up with a "new" sounding device with four knobs .... that's enough 
Just count the number of "Twisted TS-9" clones out there ....!










....... got to 50 yet ?

MM

[petemoore]

  A.S.P.> You're answer truly made me laugh out loud !!!
  TOO FUNNY !!!
  I was going to go something like, as soon as you finish your first FF, and use two 47k's instead of the 100k.
  Right up to the point where the circuit you spent years developing, 'crosses' with something a 'large monster' with sharp legal teeth is using.

[spudulike]

OI - I just patented and copyrighted "Tone On The Range" and "Twisted TS9" so this is a C&D order - stop using it without royalty payments you b***ards