On 16 January 2016 at 20:46, Jeremy Bennett jeremy.bennett@embecosm.com wrote:
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On 16/01/16 18:03, Matt Maier wrote:
Yeah, that's basically it. Physical, practical, functional ideas are only covered by patents. If something works, the fact that it works is not controlled. Copyright allows you to control the description that you fixed in a medium using some amount of artistic effort. But if someone uses their own artistic effort to reproduce the idea in a medium they have copyright on their own version.
This is the fundamental problem with hardware licensing. The main open hardware licences (SolderPad, CERN OHL, and TAPR OHL) address this by recognizing that all significant hardware relies on its documentation and design drawings, which can be protected by copyright, and so the licenses protect this.
Trying to copy any significant piece of hardware without infringing the copyright on design documentation or drawings is quite hard, so these licenses work reasonably well.
I'm not so sure. I forgot the exact price quoted, but IIRC for >$100 you can have a mobile phone sized multilayer PCB photographed out in China, with scans for each layer. Following which I should think you could have a design entered from these plus a BOM, for a relatively modest sum.
This is why copyleft, using copyright as a mechanism alone, will never be anywhere like as effective as when applied to software.
Any license is not going to stop some cheap knock-off shop in the far east selling small volumes online - it's not worth the legal hassle. But anyone trying to sell large volumes through a reputable channel will have difficulty. Those channels won't risk being sued, having to bin stock, suffer reputational damage, and then pay compensation. Look how many years W H Smith wouldn't stock Private Eye for fear of such action.
Indeed, reputation is the key thing here. Which perhaps also goes towards explaining why you see OSHW manufacturers paying royalties to original designers, when they are not obliged to. Although I'm sure they in turn also benefit from maintaining a healthy relationship.
Related to this, Bunnie Huang's writing on the Chinese "Gonkai" approach to IP makes for interesting reading:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
Cheers,
Andrew