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Why do companies try to take patents out on standard schematics?
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bdunham7:

--- Quote from: Faringdon on October 26, 2021, 12:10:32 pm ---Why do they do it?

--- End quote ---

The four reasons for hiding/withholding a schematic are 1)  to prevent anyone from copying or learning from a truly remarkable design 2) to prevent anyone from fixing or modifying the product  3) to hide the fact that the design was copied from somewhere or 4) to hide the fact the the design is a bag of crap and perhaps can't do what it claims it can (audiophoolery and other scam products).

LaserSteve:
I worked for a year for a vendor of some interesting but low tech things for the  military market. Our low life, least cost "competitor" hired multiple private investigators to trespass 150 meters onto the farm to get to our design center and raid the office trash. Being lonely and stuck 300 miles from home, I made it my winter project to create some interesting large schematics that were not shredded per procedure. 

I hope they enjoyed building the most ineffective,  inefficient,  expensive, failure prone hardware I could design. Leaked complete with data sheets and photoshopped invoices.  Any part or demo board  I did not like went out in the trash.

For cars, audio for bands, lab equipment,  I support right to repair. However, when the creepy competitor risks lives in the field by copy-pasta reverse engineering, there I draw the line.

Steve

Zero999:
I've never heard of any company doing this. They normally make their employees sign non disclosure agreements and lots of modern designs are also in software, rather than purely schematics. It sounds a bit silly to me. If I worked somewhere like that, I'd start to look elsewhere.
ferdieCX:

--- Quote from: Kjelt on October 26, 2021, 01:45:05 pm ---
Go back in time to the 80's / 90's, Philips, a dutch consumer electronics and TME manufacturer, for any of their devices they had service manuals you could order and buy for $15-30.
In the end of the service manual there was the schematic, the pcb layout with quadrants and all the parts that you also could order.
They did this for the repair dept. but also external companies that could repair their products.

Go forward to 2021, Apple won't give any details, schematics, nor sell you any spare chip, etc.

They call that progress  :palm:

--- End quote ---

I remember a time when Philips used to put inside a copy of the schematics, even in a portable transistor radio.
Messtechniker:
Yep. Those were the days.
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