I guess I was referring to those who just want to rip-off, or copy, someone else's design. In a sense, I did find it funny when someone comes to me asking me to replicate someone else's design, and it happens to be 1 of my own PCB designs. It's happened more than once to me.
Example: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6088052.WKU.&OS=PN/6088052&RS=PN/6088052 My concept of line muting was demoed under non-disclosure to a company called H3D back in 97. They were informed that it was my own concept & that I had applied for a patent. It was a simple means to get 3D on the desktop with win95/98 with any 2D or 3D graphics accelerator. 1 year later, they managed a cheap knock off of the line muting, they sold themselves out of business because of poor business practices to a company called Illixco, who now makes an oem version of their 3D glasses with a box that does line muting, bugged & incorrectly I might add, which allows them to play movies on the desktop & or explore some web pages in 3D. Now, do I waist time going after them, or, further develop 2 additional new patents which have more than quadruple to value each? _____________ Brian Guralnick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 8:15 PM Subject: Re: [PEDA] License Legalities OT > At 11:51 AM 9/10/2003, Brian Guralnick wrote: > > > I mentioned this because I know that a designer might be approached by > > > someone who wants to make such a thing. He might provide a photo of an old > > > board and say that he needs to reproduce it, the originals have been lost, > > > >I guess laziness has no-bounds. > > I'm not sure that I understand what Mr. Guralnick means here. The situation > described can be legitimate, i.e., a manufacturer may have lost the > fabrication data for an old pcb; I encountered this situation with a large > elevator manufacturer who need to make a board that was last made ten years > before. The old design worked fine, they did not need something new, and > all they had was one of the PCBs. It was clearly theirs, it had their name > etched on it! They paid me to, essentially, copy the design. It was, in > fact, one of my early Protel jobs. I photographed the board with a digital > camera, and brought the image into Protel with one of the > graphics-to-Protel-track utilities that are still available. I then created > footprints and drew new track over the old (the old was on a mech layer). > It would have been just as easy to design the board anew, but they > specifically did not want a new design, they wanted something exactly like > the old. > > As part of the process, I did discover some errors in the original design, > one or two floating inputs, which can be in practice harmless but which can > bite you when you least expect it. > > As a step further down the path to disrepute, another potential customer > came to me one time and claimed that a designer working for him had > abandoned the project in mid stream and all he had was a prototype > board.... This gets pretty dicey, but it would also be difficult, in > practice, to confirm or deny the truth of the story. > > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
