Not seeking legal advice in any way at all but since we have a good number of lawyers here I thought I'd ask as this interests me on a number of levels.
Moog Music makes synthesizers such as this Minimoog:
That one's mine. They were originally made in the 1970s and they sold 14,000 of them (an astronomical number at the time). Moog got bought, went out of business, reformed, and in 2002 made a new, more modern version called the Minimoog Voyager. Then last year they essentially cloned the old version and are now making new Minimoogs that are identical to the old ones. Here's a new one (not mine):
Now along comes Behringer who just announced they'll be making a Minimoog clone because the design is 40+ years old and so therefore it's "open source" now and anyone can use it. Here's what theirs will look like:
It's not exactly the same because it's only about 4" x 19" (much smaller, maybe half the size) but they say the circuitry will be identical at about 1/8 the price. And also, Behringer is known for copying others' designs and selling them cheaper. It's what they do, just not ever before as blatantly as this where they're actually touting it as a feature. They're not just copying the look but also the actual circuits.
So, finally, my question: is this sort of thing allowed? Can they just make a copy of (admittedly 0ld) circuitry? Does the fact that the original Moog company no longer exists make any difference (even though the new Moog company was started by the same person)? While this "feels" wrong to me somehow I'm just wondering if it's just a normal thing that a business is allowed to do.
Moog Music makes synthesizers such as this Minimoog:
That one's mine. They were originally made in the 1970s and they sold 14,000 of them (an astronomical number at the time). Moog got bought, went out of business, reformed, and in 2002 made a new, more modern version called the Minimoog Voyager. Then last year they essentially cloned the old version and are now making new Minimoogs that are identical to the old ones. Here's a new one (not mine):
Now along comes Behringer who just announced they'll be making a Minimoog clone because the design is 40+ years old and so therefore it's "open source" now and anyone can use it. Here's what theirs will look like:
It's not exactly the same because it's only about 4" x 19" (much smaller, maybe half the size) but they say the circuitry will be identical at about 1/8 the price. And also, Behringer is known for copying others' designs and selling them cheaper. It's what they do, just not ever before as blatantly as this where they're actually touting it as a feature. They're not just copying the look but also the actual circuits.
So, finally, my question: is this sort of thing allowed? Can they just make a copy of (admittedly 0ld) circuitry? Does the fact that the original Moog company no longer exists make any difference (even though the new Moog company was started by the same person)? While this "feels" wrong to me somehow I'm just wondering if it's just a normal thing that a business is allowed to do.
