General > General Technical Chat
"Giving away secrets" of electronics?
IanB:
--- Quote from: eti on November 23, 2022, 02:05:32 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.
--- End quote ---
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.
IanB:
--- Quote from: T3sl4co1l on November 23, 2022, 01:47:08 am ---I suppose you've never seen your hard-earned work copied effortlessly and for pennies on the dollar by Chinese suppliers?
--- End quote ---
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.
eti:
--- Quote from: IanB on November 23, 2022, 02:12:38 am ---
--- Quote from: eti on November 23, 2022, 02:03:11 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.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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.
niconiconi:
--- Quote from: vk6zgo 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".
--- End quote ---
+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.
IanB:
--- Quote from: niconiconi on November 23, 2022, 04:05:43 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.
--- End quote ---
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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