Laying it to rest.... (I hope): John speaks!

[chee]

At the bottom of his home page, John is pretty clear as to what he means. I quote:

"All designs and original content posted on these pages are Copyright © 2007 John Krutke, All Rights Reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced in any form without written or email consent from the author. These designs are free for non-commercial use."

Clearly you can use John's recommendations to build your own, but he'll take legal umbrage if you make them commercially, which means build them and sell them. I suppose people can build them and give them away or build them and offer them for a goodwill offering, but one cannot put a price on them, and sell them like they were one's own.

The scary thing here is that anyone could build them and sell them under his/her own name, and unless they became a big name in the business, no one could ever know without taking them apart and writing each tiny detail down. And John surely isn't going to do that!

Enough said.

Chee

P.S.: "sniff, sniff", yeah, he still doesn't want my money.

[aricaudio]

[Pete Schumacher ®]

After all, a lot of DIY guys do build and sell systems, so it's nice to know what kind of legal pitfalls one might encounter.

[scottd]

Unfortunately in this day and age the reality is that a lone inventor or speaker designer has little ability to protect his or her intellectual property. Attorneys will claim that individuals are protected with things such as patents and trademarking and this is true but this protection doesn't come cheap and since attorneys are the ones making money off of both sides they do have a vested interest in endorsing litigation.

Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.

So while a speaker design or project on the internet is protected by copyright the fact is that it is the displayed content that is being protected meanin Joe X can't copy and paste my design and put it on his website. But without patent protection I can't keep that actual design from being produced and sold by anyone.

Is it right to take someone else's design and sell it? Probabably not...but there isn't much I or anyone else can do based on a copyright...

[chee]

JK sells the crossover plan.

He should do what he does, but sell the crossover plan for some price. If he fails to post the crossover plan, then the speakers are pretty much worthless.

Chee