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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Roberts" data-source="post: 116072" data-attributes="member: 126">Re: Copyright, Patent, General Intellectual Property DiscussionYawn... I am too lazy to bother with who Alto is or where they came from. Sometimes these new low end competitors are inadvertently created by western companies, or not exactly western companies like Yamaha for example who used Phonic as their contract manufacturer for years, teaching them the basics. It is just natural (or human avarice) for these CM who operate on very slender profit margins, to feel cheated by the manufacturers who make much larger profit margins. Note: the manufacturers feel the same way about the distributors and dealers who make even larger profit margins, or they could if not so self destructive with discounting.). The catch-22 for these often successful and well capitalized offshore factory owners is that they lack a popular brand and/or distribution network to capture the rest of the profit they feel cheated out of. You can build a new brand from scratch the old fashioned way with a lot of money and time, or buy one. Over the years there are examples of the CM buying out their original customer (IIRC that's what happened to Kurzweil, but there were others).  Nowadays we can buy off the shelf mic preamp ICs that don't suck, so a wet behind the ears junior engineer can make a respectable mixer front end. I like to joke that mixers/consoles are the hardest simple circuit to do well (power amps are the other). Simple in concept, but often difficult in execution, to do well.  (I managed a mixer engineering group for a while so I know a little about this subject). I have talked about proprietary  experience based IP. In the context of mixers/consoles the difference between old and young design engineers is the old ones already made the common mistakes. Sometimes a new copy cat gets lucky and copies close enough to do it right, sometimes I see the old mistakes creep into new offerings from companies lacking an experienced bench. FWIW there are less traps to fall into with small format mixers. My ego makes it hard to accept that mixer design is trivial while it isn't rocket science. There is a great deal of subtle proprietary design wisdom associated with large console designs. Some is related to analog implementations so quickly becoming archaic, but some will translate to digital design execution (like human factors engineering). Not legally protectable, but still having real value IMO.     JR</blockquote>

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