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<blockquote data-quote="Rob Timmerman" data-source="post: 115896" data-attributes="member: 172">Re: New Midas M32 ConsoleThere was a time when many Behringer products bore more similarities to competitive products that predated them in the marketplace than was needed from a purely functional aspect.&nbsp; This trend included product documentation that in some cases appeared to by a word-for-word copy of another manufacturer&#039;s documentation.&nbsp; Specific examples were hashed out on various online fora that predate this one (including at least one that has since undergone some major changes, potentially includig the loss of forum archives), and I won&#039;t belabor them here.&nbsp; US intellectual property laws provide relatively weak protection for functional designs, covering them under Design Patents, and then only if the patent is granted.&nbsp; Filing and enforcement costs may make a design patent impractical, especially if the design is not especially novel (an analog mixer layout tends to follow a primarily functional path, although each designer may make their own tweaks, so is likely not worth protecting).&nbsp; Likewise, the USPTO has stated that circuit board designs are not covered by copyright (and neither are circuit schematics typically, although those may be covered by patent).&nbsp; So new iterations on designs (particularly for products designed to a price point) are typically unprotected from an IP point of view.While it may be straightforward for a designer in a given field (someone &quot;skilled in the art&quot;) to design a new product, that takes R+D time and effort.&nbsp; Modifying an existing design tends to be quicker and easier, as the fundamentals have already been proven.&nbsp; It has been suggested that Behringer (the company, not the founder personally) has a history of &quot;borrowing&quot; designs (not just feature sets) from the marketplace as starting points for their own product lines, likely to reduce R+D time and costs.&nbsp; While this may be legal under the specific IP framework set out by the USPTO, it does tend to irk designers and companies who have spent time and money creating a new design instead of using somebody else&#039;s design.&nbsp; (Of interest, this situation is completely different legally for cover bands, although the scenario is very similar).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Rob Timmerman, post: 115896, member: 172"] Re: New Midas M32 Console There was a time when many Behringer products bore more similarities to competitive products that predated them in the marketplace than was needed from a purely functional aspect. This trend included product documentation that in some cases appeared to by a word-for-word copy of another manufacturer's documentation. Specific examples were hashed out on various online fora that predate this one (including at least one that has since undergone some major changes, potentially includig the loss of forum archives), and I won't belabor them here. US intellectual property laws provide relatively weak protection for functional designs, covering them under Design Patents, and then only if the patent is granted. Filing and enforcement costs may make a design patent impractical, especially if the design is not especially novel (an analog mixer layout tends to follow a primarily functional path, although each designer may make their own tweaks, so is likely not worth protecting). Likewise, the USPTO has stated that circuit board designs are not covered by copyright (and neither are circuit schematics typically, although those may be covered by patent). So new iterations on designs (particularly for products designed to a price point) are typically unprotected from an IP point of view. While it may be straightforward for a designer in a given field (someone "skilled in the art") to design a new product, that takes R+D time and effort. Modifying an existing design tends to be quicker and easier, as the fundamentals have already been proven. It has been suggested that Behringer (the company, not the founder personally) has a history of "borrowing" designs (not just feature sets) from the marketplace as starting points for their own product lines, likely to reduce R+D time and costs. While this may be legal under the specific IP framework set out by the USPTO, it does tend to irk designers and companies who have spent time and money creating a new design instead of using somebody else's design. (Of interest, this situation is completely different legally for cover bands, although the scenario is very similar). [/QUOTE]

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