Author Topic: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?  (Read 9853 times)

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Offline Kasper

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #25 on: November 22, 2022, 10:04:47 pm »
My guess is he was making fun of the customer and their bog standard designs online.  The customer found out and wants to have a chat about it.
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #26 on: November 22, 2022, 10:16:59 pm »
Hence my acronym FTTS = Farrington Treeze Time Sink (Treeze was his alternate pseudonym)

treez --> zenerbjt --> faringdon

FZTTS

...

The original treez identity was renamed to 'ocset' - go on, let's see you work that one in!  ;D
Best Regards, Chris
 

Offline hexreader

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #27 on: November 22, 2022, 10:42:27 pm »
Post removed

Had second thoughts

There is no excuse for being mean, and having fun at other's expense

Sorry treez 
« Last Edit: November 22, 2022, 11:26:02 pm by hexreader »
 
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Online tautech

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #28 on: November 22, 2022, 10:52:00 pm »
Here's one for you:
HOW IS HE EVEN STILL HERE ?
Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 
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Offline Gyro

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #29 on: November 22, 2022, 10:57:22 pm »
Quote of hexreader's post removed.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2022, 07:44:41 pm by Gyro »
Best Regards, Chris
 
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Online tautech

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #30 on: November 22, 2022, 11:23:28 pm »
And we think DSO’s are bad for aliasing !  :scared:
Avid Rabid Hobbyist.
Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 
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Online vk6zgo

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #31 on: November 23, 2022, 12:23:44 am »
Even though it is Faringdon, there are a lot of places out there which try to pretend the most "public domain" of circuitry can be described as "trade secrets".

One place I worked had an interface board (which they somewhat grandly, called a "mother board") filled with circuitry straight out of the National Semiconductor IC book.
For ages, they wouldn't let us have a schematic, making troubleshooting problematical, to say the least.

Such nonsense is usually driven by Management drones, unfortunately often abetted by technical people who know better, but are playing along for internal political ends.

In another place, a plain old CRT monitor in a piece of hearing testing equipment developed a vertical deflection problem.
The standard procedure was to send them back to the USA, to be replaced with a "Refurbed" unit for around $A1200.

Although this was a "nice little earner" for the supplier, they decided to stop doing that, & to sell us a brand new, much more expensive monitor.
 
Looking at the board, the circuitry around the "jungle IC" which provided all the scanning drive signals looked familiar, although the morons had sanded the identification off the IC.

Following my hunch, I spoke to an ex- colleague, who loaned me a Electrohome monitor handbook.
Sure enough, it was the very same circuitry, albeit in a different PCB layout.
The problem, as with the "E'homes", turned out to be a quite underrated diode, which, when it died, caused this fault.

A look in the store yielded a dusty looking, long forgotten diode which filled the bill admirably, so we were able to return the device to the customer without having to hit them with a huge financial shock!
 
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Offline eti

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #32 on: November 23, 2022, 12:41:37 am »
ETI says
"It's quite the insult to call an electronics engineer an "electrical engineer"....Oh boy did it annoy me!!"

I was in university in 1960s, engineering was CE civil, EE electrical, ME mechanical

We required all three courses regardless of specialty.  I was indeed an EE.


There were no special category of electronic engineer!

My professors were all "electrical engineers" one from Con Edison, many from Bell Laboratoires, some authored out text books. 

most of my 55 years of experience are with analog and power circuit and products design

So, ETI, I take issue of your words about insults.

Have a great day

Jon
I had said That is what I thought as a teenager for a short time, not my opinion now.

If you choose to take offence to an opinion I held over 30 years ago, that is somewhat foolish.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2022, 12:46:25 am by eti »
 

Offline IanB

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #33 on: November 23, 2022, 12:57:02 am »
Even though it is Faringdon, there are a lot of places out there which try to pretend the most "public domain" of circuitry can be described as "trade secrets".

The real problem is that technology today has taken the place that magic held in the past.

The world somehow thinks that the way things work is so complex, so mysterious, that only a few select people who have been inducted into the hidden knowledge can understand it.

Whereas, in reality, any technical problem can be solved by the application of appropriate logic, imagination, and deductive reasoning. There are no technical secrets. Show a device that does something, and someone else can construct a device that does the same thing. Present a description of what a new device needs to do, and someone can construct a device that fits the bill. The fact this is so easy to do so is why patents exist. Patents are like mining claims. The first person to file the paperwork gets to own the proceeds.

In my utopian world, I would like the patent system to be abolished, and let people be free to create, invent, and compete without restraint.
 
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Offline eti

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #34 on: November 23, 2022, 01:06:24 am »
Even though it is Faringdon, there are a lot of places out there which try to pretend the most "public domain" of circuitry can be described as "trade secrets".

The real problem is that technology today has taken the place that magic held in the past.

The world somehow thinks that the way things work is so complex, so mysterious, that only a few select people who have been inducted into the hidden knowledge can understand it.

Whereas, in reality, any technical problem can be solved by the application of appropriate logic, imagination, and deductive reasoning. There are no technical secrets. Show a device that does something, and someone else can construct a device that does the same thing. Present a description of what a new device needs to do, and someone can construct a device that fits the bill. The fact this is so easy to do so is why patents exist. Patents are like mining claims. The first person to file the paperwork gets to own the proceeds.

In my utopian world, I would like the patent system to be abolished, and let people be free to create, invent, and compete without restraint.

Brilliant. And also naive. People should be rewarded financially for their own personal inventions, where they’ve invested vast amounts of time and personal money into developing an invention no one has considered up until then. Utopia never works. That is a daydream.

It’s all very well for the rest of society who made no personal sacrifice in this way, to assume they’re entitled to it.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #35 on: November 23, 2022, 01:25:39 am »
Brilliant. And also naive. People should be rewarded financially for their own personal inventions, where they’ve invested vast amounts of time and personal money into developing an invention no one has considered up until then. Utopia never works. That is a daydream.

On the contrary, people should be penalized for being so slow and inefficient in their work. They should lose out to people who can develop the same products faster, more efficiently, and at lower cost. Everyone benefits from this, especially consumers, who can pay lower prices.

If you spend time and money on something, it is not an invention, it is product development. An invention is a lightbulb moment, something that happens instantaneously, a concept that nobody has thought of before. Go through the catalog of patents published in a given year. You will find that nearly all of them are the entirely obvious result of applying deductive reasoning to a given problem statement.

I contend that there is not much left in the world that nobody has already thought of. People have thought of almost everything, and so the patent system is a relic of a distant past that has little relevance today.

There are a few new and original things that are invented, but they constitute only a tiny fraction of patent applications.
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #36 on: November 23, 2022, 01:47:08 am »
So there's no incentive to invent anything at all?  Cool.

I suppose you've never seen your hard-earned work copied effortlessly and for pennies on the dollar by Chinese suppliers?  (Not saying I have personally, but I have seen others.)

Ed: heh, case in point, this thread just popped up on the unread-posts list, by coincidence: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/saleae-prices/

Tim
« Last Edit: November 23, 2022, 01:50:02 am by T3sl4co1l »
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Offline eti

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #37 on: November 23, 2022, 02:03:11 am »
Brilliant. And also naive. People should be rewarded financially for their own personal inventions, where they’ve invested vast amounts of time and personal money into developing an invention no one has considered up until then. Utopia never works. That is a daydream.

On the contrary, people should be penalized for being so slow and inefficient in their work. They should lose out to people who can develop the same products faster, more efficiently, and at lower cost. Everyone benefits from this, especially consumers, who can pay lower prices.

If you spend time and money on something, it is not an invention, it is product development. An invention is a lightbulb moment, something that happens instantaneously, a concept that nobody has thought of before. Go through the catalog of patents published in a given year. You will find that nearly all of them are the entirely obvious result of applying deductive reasoning to a given problem statement.

I contend that there is not much left in the world that nobody has already thought of. People have thought of almost everything, and so the patent system is a relic of a distant past that has little relevance today.

There are a few new and original things that are invented, but they constitute only a tiny fraction of patent applications.

** This is such a basic logical fallacy that it almost beggars belief. Only things that have been thought of, have been thought of. The things that have yet to be thought of, haven't yet been thought of, ergo it's absolutely impossible to quantify how much is left to be thought of (or discovered, for want of a more correct term), since it has not yet been thought of.

The sum of all human knowledge accrued to date, is analogous to a single atom in a universe of, well, many many atoms. We can't know what we don't know, and since we only know what we know, we can't know what we DON'T know, and what we may never know. General human arrogance (not meaning you) is astonishingly amusing, as it assumes WE are the beginning, middle and end of all that ever was and ever will be. And I say... LOL!
 

Offline eti

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #38 on: November 23, 2022, 02:05:32 am »
So there's no incentive to invent anything at all?  Cool.

I suppose you've never seen your hard-earned work copied effortlessly and for pennies on the dollar by Chinese suppliers?  (Not saying I have personally, but I have seen others.)

Ed: heh, case in point, this thread just popped up on the unread-posts list, by coincidence: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/saleae-prices/

Tim

Yep. Exactly. It's easy to glibly rattle off trite, entitled commentary when one hasn't done the work or made any personal sacrifice.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #39 on: November 23, 2022, 02:12:38 am »
** This is such a basic logical fallacy that it almost beggars belief. Only things that have been thought of, have been thought of. The things that have yet to be thought of, haven't yet been thought of, ergo it's absolutely impossible to quantify how much is left to be thought of (or discovered, for want of a more correct term), since it has not yet been thought of.

It is indeed possible to quantify. Just read patents. Go look at them. You will observe that 99% of them are obvious and contain no invention at all. If patents were restricted to the 1% of things that are truly original and inventive, that would be one thing, but that is patently not the case (pun intended). Patents are a game played by big corporations with expensive lawyers so they can trade poker hands against one another. Individuals just get squashed underfoot and left by the wayside.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #40 on: November 23, 2022, 02:19:13 am »
Yep. Exactly. It's easy to glibly rattle off trite, entitled commentary when one hasn't done the work or made any personal sacrifice.

Again, "doing the work" or "making sacrifices" is not invention--it is work, or the cost of doing business.

To be clear, a successful patent application does not require that the invention works, it does not require that any kind of prototype or demonstration exists, it does not require that any useful product can be made out of it. The only requirement for a successful patent application is that it is written in the correct legal language, and that it can overcome any objections from the patent examiner about something already claimed by someone else.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #41 on: November 23, 2022, 02:22:26 am »
I suppose you've never seen your hard-earned work copied effortlessly and for pennies on the dollar by Chinese suppliers?

There's a remedy for copying the work of others, it's called copyright. It is a legal tool used extensively by artists, musicians, authors, and many others. Engineers should make more use of it.
 

Offline eti

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #42 on: November 23, 2022, 02:23:09 am »
** This is such a basic logical fallacy that it almost beggars belief. Only things that have been thought of, have been thought of. The things that have yet to be thought of, haven't yet been thought of, ergo it's absolutely impossible to quantify how much is left to be thought of (or discovered, for want of a more correct term), since it has not yet been thought of.

It is indeed possible to quantify. Just read patents. Go look at them. You will observe that 99% of them are obvious and contain no invention at all. If patents were restricted to the 1% of things that are truly original and inventive, that would be one thing, but that is patently not the case (pun intended). Patents are a game played by big corporations with expensive lawyers so they can trade poker hands against one another. Individuals just get squashed underfoot and left by the wayside.

It would take you a life's work to thoroughly examine, analyse etc, "99% of patents". You'd better start now, life is short.

Right, so anyway, regardless, we all assume many things in life "should be" the way that suits us, but they ain't. You're not gonna change this, and it ain't the way you want it to be, so hard cheese I suppose.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2022, 02:26:21 am by eti »
 

Offline niconiconi

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #43 on: November 23, 2022, 04:05:43 am »
Even though it is Faringdon, there are a lot of places out there which try to pretend the most "public domain" of circuitry can be described as "trade secrets".

+1 for this. Also, I've seen many misconceptions about copyright and patents, including on engineering forums. For example, an engineer may say a circuit design cannot be used here because it's still "copyrighted" (Marco Reps made this mistake in a video), or that the theory of operation of a circuit cannot be described or unknowable because it's "patented" (On another forum, I've seen an engineer who refused to explain the actual circuit in a Fluke voltage standard, and instead used a substitute instead. There are many valid reasons for refusing to explain it, but not because it's patented, you absolutely have the right to do this).

Copyright

Copyright only applies to the particular representation (e.g. drawing or writing) of a fact, not the fact itself. So a particular engineering drawing is copyrighted, and it's often a copyright violation to copy the original drawing. But it's underlying circuit netlist, topology, design, or even component values are not. Everyone else is free to replicate the same circuit independently. As long as the original drawing is not copied, copyright does not apply and is not violated. This is the entire legal basis of reverse engineering. And in some cases, even if the original drawing is copied exactly, it's still not a copyright violation due to

- Merger Doctrine - if the particular expression is the only possible way to express an underlying idea, this expression is essentially the idea itself, and one cannot claim its copyright. If I invented the common-emitter amplifier, I cannot claim I have the copyright of its drawing and stop others from drawing the same topology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction#Merger_doctrine

- Fair Use (for example, if only a limited portion has been copied, and it's used for commentary or educational purposes, in such a way that the interests of the original copyright owner is largely unaffected - this is why you usually have the right to open a service manual, and making a video to explain how a particular subcircuit works). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

- Functional object. In some special cases, even a 100% copy is not necessarily a copyright violation. VLSI layout belongs to this category. Under standard US copyright laws, the circuit layout itself may be a copyrightable drawing, but the layout as it appears in a photomask of a chip is a functional object to create chips, not an artistic work of drawing, thus in some cases, it may be copied without violating copyright. It was exactly why the US semiconductor industry lobbied Congress back in the 1980s to create a special kind of "chip layout copyright" to cover this application, since "conventional" copyright is too weak. (P.S: Interestingly, following the same argument, it can be argued that PCB layouts, in many cases, can also be 100% copied without violating copyright, but nobody has lobbied Congress to create a similar kind of copyright, I suspect it was because the costs and stakes are high for chip makers, but are still too low for PCB makers so nobody in the industry bothered to do that). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_design_protection

Patents

A patent is attached to abstract ideas, such as a circuit topology or design. By obtaining a patent, the patent owner gains exclusively rights to prevent others from replicating the same design without authorization, no matter whether copying is involved or not. But, at the same time, the design itself becomes public. While you're prohibited from replicating the device, you're allowed, and even encouraged to learn and discuss how the invention actually works (which is the very purpose of patent laws). And once all relevant patents have expired, the design enters the public domain and becomes free for all.

Trade Secrets

And both are different from trade secrets. A trade secret, by its definition, is not patented. Making a design to be a trade secret instead of a patent is actually a rather risky decision, since once the trade secret has been rediscovered by a 3rd-party through legal means (such as reverse engineering a sample, or independent rediscovery), it automatically enters the public domain upon publication. But on the other hand, the benefits are: you can keep the design secret, you don't have to publish the design, and it doesn't have an expiration date. If the design is mysterious and arcane enough, it can last a really long time as a secret. For example, Tektronix's T-coil design equations for oscilloscope vertical amplifiers remained a secret for many decades. https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/analog/article/21807815/whats-all-this-tcoil-stuff-anyhow

Conclusion

In conclusion, every hobbyist and engineer, including your competitor, has the right to understand and discuss how a circuit works, based on legally-obtained samples and information. Don't say one can't talk about a circuit because of "patent", and don't say one can't use a circuit because of "copyright"... And 90% of the circuit boards you see in everyday life have no secret.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2022, 09:24:26 am by niconiconi »
 
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Offline IanB

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #44 on: November 23, 2022, 05:06:20 am »
Copyright only applies to the particular representation (e.g. drawing or writing) of a fact, not the fact itself. So a particular engineering drawing is copyrighted, and it's often a copyright violation to copy the original drawing. But it's underlying circuit netlist, topology, design, or even component values are not. Everyone else is free to replicate the same circuit independently. As long as the original drawing is not copied, copyright does not apply and is not violated.

This is an example of where the law is illogical and wrong.

In music, copyright applies to a particular sequence of notes ("a fact"), and not the expression of that fact, nor merely the manuscript where the sequence of notes is written down. Everyone is not free to replicate the same sequence of notes independently, regardless of how they express them, not matter what instrument they are played on, and not matter what surrounding embellishment is included. If someone produces an entirely different musical work that incorporates the same sequence of notes, they can, and will be sued for copyright infringement (see for example, "Land Down Under" by Men At Work).

It is completely illogical that if someone replicates (copies for gain) the same arrangement of components that was composed into a circuit by someone else, that they are not infringing a copyright. Why is an arrangement of musical notes protectable, but an arrangement of electronic components not? There is a double standard at work here.
 
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Offline DavidAlfa

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #45 on: November 23, 2022, 05:41:46 am »
Entered thinking it was a nice book or something, "Secrets of electronics" but no way!
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Offline niconiconi

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #46 on: November 23, 2022, 05:52:04 am »
Copyright only applies to the particular representation (e.g. drawing or writing) of a fact, not the fact itself. So a particular engineering drawing is copyrighted, and it's often a copyright violation to copy the original drawing. But it's underlying circuit netlist, topology, design, or even component values are not. Everyone else is free to replicate the same circuit independently. As long as the original drawing is not copied, copyright does not apply and is not violated.

This is an example of where the law is illogical and wrong.

In music, copyright applies to a particular sequence of notes ("a fact"), and not the expression of that fact, nor merely the manuscript where the sequence of notes is written down.

It is completely illogical that if someone replicates (copies for gain) the same arrangement of components that was composed into a circuit by someone else, that they are not infringing a copyright. Why is an arrangement of musical notes protectable, but an arrangement of electronic components not? There is a double standard at work here.

This double-standard is known as the "Useful Articles doctrine" under the US copyright laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Useful_articles) , and, as far as I know, it has been the rule for centuries since the very beginning of copyright. Essentially, copyright laws are primarily applied to artistic works, not functional works. While there is no shortage of creative and artistic elements in a functional engineering work, but first and foremost it's a practical object with an intrinsic utilitarian function. Thus, under the laws, the functional aspect of these objects are largely excluded from copyright laws deliberately, and is instead lies in the realm of patent laws (you can certainly create a pure artwork with circuit components, and that will be copyrighted as any work of art, but it's not the case for 99.9% of the electronic systems in existence)

The US Copyright Office says:

Quote
A “useful article” is an object having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information. Examples are clothing, furniture, machinery, dinnerware, and lighting fixtures. An article that is normally part of a useful article may itself be a useful article, for example, an ornamental wheel cover on a vehicle.

Copyright does not protect the mechanical or utilitarian aspects of such works of craftsmanship. It may, however, protect any pictorial, graphic, or sculptural authorship that can be identified separately from the utilitarian aspects of an object. Thus, a useful article may have both copyrightable and uncopyrightable features. For example, a carving on the back of a chair or a floral relief design on silver flatware could be protected by copyright, but the design of the chair or flatware itself could not.

Some designs of useful articles may qualify for protection under the federal patent law.

Copyright in a work that portrays a useful article extends only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design.

In the words of Bruce Perens,

Quote
Think of the problems we would have if this were otherwise: we would not be able to use the schematics that we learned in books in our products, and the practice of electronics would be stifled. Designs published in ham radio magazines back to the 1910's would have to be licensed. Even antenna designs! Even wire antenna designs! Everything we did with electronics would grind to a halt. Electronics already has enough bad intellectual property law under the patent regime, we don't want more based on copyright.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2022, 09:40:06 am by niconiconi »
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #47 on: November 23, 2022, 07:57:14 am »
I suppose you've never seen your hard-earned work copied effortlessly and for pennies on the dollar by Chinese suppliers?

There's a remedy for copying the work of others, it's called copyright. It is a legal tool used extensively by artists, musicians, authors, and many others. Engineers should make more use of it.

Engineers*... specifically can't use copyright.  That's why the PTO exists!

e.g. offhand, https://www.lendio.com/blog/patents-copyrights-trademarks/

*Except for source code (software engineers), which is copyrightable.  Sometimes both, but that's its own can of worms.

Note: whether or not patents are meaningful, useful, novel in a more broad sense -- is aside the point.  They are a legal fiction and any real-world notions about them are strictly inapplicable -- or at least until tested as such in a court of law.  Legal fact is different from scientific fact is different from (even more abstract, or such that it can exist) philosophical fact.  While it would be nice if these were in fact all the same, for a variety of good and bad reasons, they are not!

Tim
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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #48 on: November 23, 2022, 08:03:14 am »
In music,

This is an even murkier topic, as it carries its own specific case law:
https://www.stockmusicmusician.com/blog/music-licensing-the-3-types-of-rights
(disclaimer: didn't read this either for any kind of validation, just the top result to introduce the subject)

Tim
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Offline JohanH

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Re: "Giving away secrets" of electronics?
« Reply #49 on: November 23, 2022, 08:40:06 am »
Music industry is crazy. In many cultures, music is a way of telling stories and in the past even an important way of transferring knowledge and information between people and from previous generations to later generations. I'm convinced it still has this role to some extent. Now if you sit around a camp fire in the US and sing a song, you could get sued. How stupid is that.
 


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