Do you Patent your work?

[danfogal1960]

Do you guys Patent your work? I see so many different pickups makers here that I am curious on how you protect your designs and not step on others who have been there and done that?

[David Schwab]

Do you guys Patent your work? I see so many different pickups makers here that I am curious on how you protect your designs and not step on others who have been there and done that?

Many of us are very familiar with all the current patents. As far as expired patents.. well they are expired. Patents are a great way to show everyone what you discovered, while not offering all that much protection in this market.

The guys that are doing the vintage thing will overlap I suppose. But anyone making a humbucker is in the same market as others making humbuckers. I don't see toes being stepped on.

I think most of the winders here all have their own tone. Pickups are a funny thing... you can take much the same ingredients and come up with many variations.

I have my own niche I operate in, and my stuff is protected by the fact that they are encapsulated in epoxy. You can break them apart, but it doesn't leave much to study.

Most of the winders here are good enough to figure things out, but we choose to do our own thing.

[cminor9]

I am not a pickup winder, but I have built a few guitar amps. I also am a proponent of the Open Source software movement. These kinds efforts allow and encourage individuals to build upon another's work. For example, on the first amp I built I took an old fender design and tweaked it based on suggestions from people on this forum. This free sharing of ideas is a good thing. It was good for me, and it will be good for the next person who might ask for help from me.

Patents can prevent this sort of thing from happening. Take for example the Mesa Boogie dual rectifier: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5168438.html. When I first started learning about guitar amplifiers and various forms of rectification, the first thing that came to my mind was "why not make them switchable so you can enjoy the characteristics of different types of rectification?" Well, as you can see above, Randall Smith of Mesa Boogie actually patented this. If I were to incorporate this VERY OBVIOUS design into an amplifier and try to sell it, I'd be liable for stepping on his IP. That's ridiculous.

I mean no disrespect, as IP is your livelihood. Clearly, in many arenas IP laws provide the protections they were intended to provide. However, in other areas they become a tool used by whomever wins the race to the patent office to stifle legitimate competition. I could see applying for a patent if you come up with something truly unique, meaning something significantly unlike any guitar amplifier ever commercially produced. But when a large percentage of your work is based on someone else's designs to begin with (Mesa Boogie got started when Randall Smith was hotrodding Fender amps) it's quite disingenuous. Don't you think the dual recto patent that I linked above is a bit frivolous?

[kevinT]

phishing for trouble.

Don't feed the Troll folks.

[cminor9]

phishing for trouble.

Don't feed the Troll folks.

I don't think anyone here is trolling, the original question seemed to be a legitimate one.

[kevinT]

I don't think anyone here is trolling, the original question seemed to be a legitimate one.

Brother....you don't know the history of what has been going on...he is a trouble maker...take my word for it.

[NightWinder]

Eon apocolyps

Look in the leesona thread Kevin....It's been locked for eons but there's new threads in there???

[kevinT]

Look in the leesona thread Kevin....It's been locked for eons but there's new threads in there???

I guess he thinks he's going to scare folks here with his signature....I have a better one for him but i'm not going down to his level.

[David Schwab]

phishing for trouble.

Don't feed the Troll folks.

I figured that as well, so I phrased my answer in such a way to avoid that, since it's a non issue.

[David Schwab]

Patents can prevent this sort of thing from happening. Take for example the Mesa Boogie dual rectifier...

I have to respectfully disagree with you here. In regards to patents such as Mesa's. This was an innovation that no one else had, and gave them an advantage in a crowded market. This is perfectly fair. If you invented something, you might choose to give it away for free, but you might decide you want to profit from that idea, and that's not a bad thing. Look at Fender. They patented the "off-set waist" for their guitar bodies. So until that expired, everyone's bodies had to have the waist line even. That was a fair innovation, even if it inconvenienced other builders.

Now if you are clever, you can modify the design, and if you feel you made an improvement on it, you can also patent that. Three examples of this very thing are the patents for Kinman pickups, which then got patented by Dimarzio, with only minor changes, and then by Kevin Beller with Duncan, with some changes. Same basic idea, with slight variations.

Patents don't last forever, and that's intentional. Dimarzio had some patents for pickups, and now they are expired, so now I can try some of those ideas if I wanted.

So with myself, I'm trying to do something different with bass pickups. What I'm doing is not technically all that different from what's out there, but it is different enough. After working over 2 years on these pickups, would I want someone to come along and just use my discoveries? Of course not!

I'm very free with information, up to the point of shooting myself in the foot! If I wasn't planning on making a living off pickups, I wouldn't care as much.

I also love the open software movement, because I love free stuff.

But you will notice that not that much is innovated that way. The GIMP is no match for Photoshop for example, and Linux is cool, but I like Mac OS X better.

Why is this? People want to make a living. When someone works hard and discovers something, he or she doesn't always want to give it away.

if you are a software programer, you have a family to feed, and a mortgage payment.. you can't always work for free. So you get hired by a big company, who want to make money, and with some like Apple, still try to be innovative and makes things to enrich people's lives, and they also give away a lot to the open source movement.

The bad side of the open or free software thing is something like what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer. They wanted a web browser and in their usual way decided to look outside the company. So they went to Spyglass to license the code for Mosaic. Mosaic of course went on to become netscape navigator, and later Mozilla/Firefox.

What MS did was to use the code to make IE, and then they gave the browser away for free. Because they didn't charge for it, they told Spyglass that they didn't owe any money on licensing fees, so they got the code for free! People at Spyglass worked hard on that, and got screwed.

So I think a balance between the two is good. if you come up with something truly unique, it's your right to protect it if you are going to actually use it. If not, you shouldn't. Like these stupid "patent clearing houses" that hold patents for things like email sent to a wireless device (and they tried to sue RIM), or more recently email with pictures!

I have a real problem with people getting a patent on vague ideas with no specific mechanism outlined.

[DrStrangelove]

danfogal1960 == Flickoflash? Hmmm.

Sir:

This is not the first time you have come to my negative attention.

Do not troll for patent applications.
Such posts will be treated as spam.


-The Immoderator

[cminor9]

I have to respectfully disagree with you here. In regards to patents such as Mesa's. This was an innovation that no one else had, and gave them an advantage in a crowded market.
.
.
.
So I think a balance between the two is good. if you come up with something truly unique, it's your right to protect it if you are going to actually use it. If not, you shouldn't. Like these stupid "patent clearing houses" that hold patents for things like email sent to a wireless device (and they tried to sue RIM), or more recently email with pictures!

I have a real problem with people getting a patent on vague ideas with no specific mechanism outlined.

I think we actually agree for the most part. Patents can be helpful and they can be abused.

To me, the dual recto thing is crazy since it's so obvious. I thought patents were supposed to be somewhat non-obvious. Yes, "obvious" is a subjective term, but come on! switching between two different pieces of circuitry on a guitar amp that impart different sonic characteristics?! duh! Jeez, I think I'll patent the stupid switch I put on my 5E3 clone. Maybe I'll come up with some stupid name for it...Two-Tone Gonkulator!

Your talk about patents for specific mechanisms made me think: the patent I linked to, I wonder if that is circuit specific or conceptual? I don't want to copy Randall Smith's circuit, I just like the idea of switching between solid state and tube rectification. If the patent allows me to use a concept I thought of (hypothetically, and I did think of it without knowing there was a product out there that did this) with a different implementation, then that seems very fair and I retract my gripe about said patent.

The fact that patents expire is good. Your ideas should give you a competitive advantage, but after a few years get over it. I cannot claim to know how long it takes before most patents expire, but more than five years is crazy. That goes beyond protecting competitive advantage and on to stifling legitimate competition. There is the notion of historical inevitability to contend with. If not me, then someone else would invent product X. I should get exclusive right for a time, but not for perpetuity (i.e. 50 years.) Ideas build upon ideas, and it's impossible to work in a vacuum (even when working with vacuum tubes!) This whole notion of "stepping on" someone else's idea is ludicrous. It's like the famous Carl Sagan quote: "If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you first have to create the universe." Randall Smith just built upon Fender's work, who build upon whatever he built upon (old westinghouse schems, etc). Maybe you'll disagree with this part.

There are some Open Source guys who are totally opposed to IP. I disagree with that sentiment. As you said, a balance is needed. But as long as we live in a capitalist society and people have ideas, there will be IP law. As long as there is IP law, there will be abuses of the system. C'est la vie!

[DrStrangelove]

I think we actually agree for the most part. Patents can be helpful and they can be abused.
(deletia)

There are some Open Source guys who are totally opposed to IP. I disagree with that sentiment. As you said, a balance is needed. But as long as we live in a capitalist society and people have ideas, there will be IP law. As long as there is IP law, there will be abuses of the system. C'est la vie!

Dude, IP law _is_ a de facto abuse since it allows patents for ideas,
setting them equal to implementations (AKA "preferred embodiment"),
thus making patent law a back door entry by which people may be
prosecuted for thought crime.

This should be an unsubtle distinction to a people
raised in a society with a Bill Of Rights.

Even RSA/Verisign realized there was no money in protecting the RSA patent,
so they went on to create a service that charges fees for a preferred embodiment
of the patent, namely, a 1st tier trusted digital certificate server.

If you have ever purchased something through a secure web server,
you have used a Verisign certificate. God forbid that you might think of
digitally signed certificates lest you be sued for infringement.


-The Immoderator
--

[David Schwab]

To me, the dual recto thing is crazy since it's so obvious. I thought patents were supposed to be somewhat non-obvious. Yes, "obvious" is a subjective term, but come on! switching between two different pieces of circuitry on a guitar amp that impart different sonic characteristics?! duh! Jeez, I think I'll patent the stupid switch I put on my 5E3 clone. Maybe I'll come up with some stupid name for it...Two-Tone Gonkulator!

But... who did it before? If there was prior art, they wouldn't have been granted a patent. It doesn't matter how obvious it is, as long as it's original.

if it was that obvious someone would have had it to market before them.

[cminor9]

Dude, IP law _is_ a de facto abuse since it allows patents for ideas,
setting them equal to implementations (AKA "preferred embodiment"),
thus making patent law a back door entry by which people may be
prosecuted for thought crime.

This should be an unsubtle distinction to a people
raised in a society with a Bill Of Rights.
--

Even though you put it more eloquently than I did, that's kind of what I said. Copyright your implementation. Don't copyright the concept. Back to the example of the dual recto: does that patent cover anyone who builds an amp with two types of rectification? Or does it just cover a very specific implementation as used by Mesa Boogie? Like I said above, the latter is OK. It's the former that I have a problem with. Like you said, that allows prosecution for thoughtcrime.

That is a very unsubtle distinction, and it's where IP law falls on its face. It's these hardcore IP proponents who try to blur the lines. It's easy for someone to maintain an unjust competitive advantage when that someone owns an entire idea. Ideas cannot be owned (or shouldn't be) because anyone who comes up with an idea culls things from other peoples' ideas. Referring to the Carl Sagan quote I dropped above, you can't bake an apple pie from scratch in the purest sense, because you are working with existing materials. You cannot have an idea that is solely yours with no external influence whatsoever. Not trying to be trite-quote-boy (now there's a superhero who Marvel never came up with!) but "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

IMO, Patenting implementations == good. Patenting ideas == bad.