I remember that Arturia had to change the name of the Jupiter-8V, which became the Jup-V. But isn't the GUI pretty much exactly like the hardware? I thought I remember D16 having to change the look of their drum machines to be less authentic though (even though the sound was meant to be the same, including sampled sounds).So - not a lawyerI wonder if Aly James asked permission to create a Linn style drum machine plugin? Or XLN Audio for their Reel Machines product?
What about Audiorealism, did they ask Roland? And d16, did they ask? Cherry Audio? Don't think so., but my general understanding of these issues from decades of discussion is along the following lines:
There's no general legal requirement to do so (hence the discussion of "ethics"), although some companies may object on the grounds of trade dress or trade marked design elements (eg, why the API-emulation PA/Lindell plugins recently had to change their knob shape from the classic API look, or Kiive had to change the GUI of their Distressor emulation to not look like the original, or Arturia had to make their Jupiter 8 look less like the hardware, and so on.)
Using sound recordings/samples that are owned by another company in a commercial product is also a legal no-no as those recordings are protected under copyright law, so a company that owns them can come after you (hence take downs of, eg, Roland D50 emulations/libraries).
With the classic old drum machines, and some early sample libraries, the situation regarding audio copyright is disputable, because there is a part of copyright law that says if a company that owns the copyright of sound recordings shows a track record of not pursuing abuses of that copyright, or seeming not to care about it (eg, samples uploaded to the internet, used in commercial libraries for decades), then after some length of time it can be argued that those sounds have essentially become public domain, and any attempts to reclaim those copyrights after decades of free dissemination of those recordings can be challenging.
In those cases, if people care enough, then lawyers get involved to see what they can do. Whether a company would go after an indie plugin developer for using old Linn sounds depends on whether there is a legal case to get past the public domain argument, a demonstration of loss to the copyright owner, and whether any damages claimed could actually be paid for by the small developer, making it an exercise in spending lots of money on lawyers, but standing to gain hardly anything to make it worthwhile. In those cases, usually a cease and desist letter is enough to threaten a developer to not use stuff owned by someone else.
, but my general understanding of these issues from decades of discussion is along the following lines:Statistics: Posted by Echoes in the Attic — Mon Jan 06, 2025 9:23 pm