it would be perfectly fine for you to take an Electra Print tranney and tear it down, reverse engineer it, copy it and have it reproduced, and then advertise it as a copy of an Electra Print just so long as the design is not patented?

And that Jack forfeits any and all proprietary interests in his own design once he sells a product?

Like I've said.... ethically, to me this would be ripping off Jack. He put the work into the design... and it is his.

Especially when there are public domain designs available that you could use to learn with... and then as your knowledge base grew perhaps even improve the design of.

If you reverse engineer Jack's product and make mistakes or don't do the job well... and all the while... your telling people that yours is a faithful replica (teardown) of Jack's transformer... who gets hurt?

For the risk that Jack faces (poor product image) what woud a Jack have to benefit from your pirating of his design?

let's just get back to the basics of the ethics of all of this...

and, again, maybee someday if you actually design and build something of value... perhaps then your views on piracy might change a bit.

msl

On this: just the other day they were $100 each (your cost as you stated)... and, if I recall correctly, a few days before that they were being offered at $140 each.

The prices were all announced as tentative and depending on final quoted price. I don't see it changing much from the $86.

and this: As just one tiny example... you mention that the original peerless was made with polyester. Nope. Polyester (mylar) was not even available commercially in 1948 when this design was introduced. This leads me to be very suspect of your tear down if you got this small point incorrect.

I said this before by way of warning you about the differences between what was actually produced by Altec and what your theft-prone documents may show. It was SOP to neglect and omit details from blueprints to protect them. It would be my best guess that the particular one I took apart was wound after the development of Mylar sheet. Regardless, that OPTx had mylar contributing to insulation between primary and secondary layers. I submit to you that the design I am copying is a more accurate version of the S-265-Q then you are capable of executing with those particular drawings.

And if you're convinced I made so many mistakes, that this cannot possibly bear any relation to what you claim to be the Peerless design, why are you here?

******************
I won't be using your trademark 'P', so don't worry about that issue. You have proven ownership of that detail thoroughly enough.
******************

Please show me this 'good will' of yours. I just don't see it.

and this: leave me and my company alone... don't use us.... don't abuse us.... and we can peacefully co-exist worlds apart without any difficulty.

I have helped your company, even though you publicaly denied it after our disagreement on how a PP transformer loads the tubes when in class A operation. I will hear you retract your statement, as proof of your so-called 'good will'.
cheers,
Douglas

MSL: it would be perfectly fine for you to take an Electra Print tranney and tear it down, reverse engineer it, copy it and have it reproduced, and then advertise it as a copy of an Electra Print just so long as the design is not patented?

Jack could wind what I want. I just don't see the economics of it. I could buy two custom OPTx from Jack or Lundahl or ____( insert your fav winder here ) for what they wish to charge. They don't seem to have any issue with putting taps at a conventiently agreed upon location. That is if I wanted to use a Lundahl or E-P design.

What I want is a tapped primary. So, where does that leave us? I don't get a TX is where if I can only get the winding information from you. You will not release the drawings to anyone. I would have no issue with paying you for the trouble, and having to pay the volume producer something more for having to go to the trouble of dealing with you. But, the design is *NOT* protected. Why should you see fit to demand what is not your right to posses?

I took it upon myself to get the job done. You refuse to even entertain varying the design from what you believe to be correct; what I am creating is NOT a Peerless design, it is not a MQ design. Why do you see any conflict?

the bid is still open, go ahead, make an entry to the project.
cheers,
Douglas

Unlikely, but possible( remember, I have researched your tactics employed against Andre Jute for criticizing your product ).

If you were to behave so as to upset me that thoroughly, it would be obvious enough to the rest of the world that you were behaving badly again, and this time it would be a second occurence and that's a lot harder to whitewash.

Your back handed almost-insults are beginning to wear thin. You should address me as Doug or Douglas.

Also, on the China topoc, I have no plan to ever source my Iron from there. I would merely facilitate them acquiring the winding cards to use as they saw fit. I deal with those who have treated me well. I do wish I could add you to that list.
cheers,
Douglas

:::What I want is a tapped primary. So, where does that leave us? I don't get a TX is where, if I can only get the winding information from you.:::

that might be true if I were the only transformer maker in the universe. But there are many, many options. Sowter in England is quite skilled in design. Or, you could adapt the Williamson output transformer design which is in the public domain.

I am under no obligation to sell, gift, or put into the public domain any of the designs which we own. If I won't do it... then you move on and find someone to do a design for you. But there shouldn't be the need to strike out at me continuously.

:::You will not release the drawings to anyone.:::

again, as you seem to acknowledge.... these are my designs (otherwise why would you keep asking ME for them).... and, again, I am not under any obligation to sell any design to you or provide you with any detail of any design which we own.

:::I would have no issue with paying you for the trouble, and having to pay the volume producer something more for having to go to the trouble of dealing with you.:::

I don't release (sell) our designs for out of house manufacturing.

:::But, the design is *NOT* protected. Why should you see fit to demand what is not your right to posses?:::

since the design is not patented... and since I will not sell you the design or give it to you... then you magically acquire the right to copy it, reverse engineer it, and use our name to promote your unauthorized copying efforts? I don't think so.

And if it is "not my right to posses" the designs... then why would you keep on asking me for access to the design... or to make the design for you... or to give you the design... or to sell you the design. Of course it's my design... that is exactly why you are asking me for it.

:::I took it upon myself to get the job done. You refuse to even entertain varying the design from what you believe to be correct;::

which again, is perfectly within my rights as the owner of the design.
You might be disappointed by my decision regarding the use, building, or disposition of the designs... but it's not your property and hence you have no right to tell me how I should manage my designs\assets\property.

:::what I am creating is NOT a Peerless design, it is not a MQ design. Why do you see any conflict?:::

I don't see any conflict at all. I see the owner of a design saying he wishes not to employ it in certain ways... and then I see a disappointed inquirer throwing a temper tantrum cause the owner of the design he had an interest in would not accomadate him.

Again, get over it. No need to strike out. Dig up that Williamson public domain design. Evaluate it. Modify it if desirable to do so.
Have it made for you.

And everyone is happy.

msl

Some of the rest of your BS:
:::since the design is not patented... and since I will not sell you the design or give it to you... then you magically acquire the right to copy it, reverse engineer it, and use our name to promote your unauthorized copying efforts? I don't think so.

You don't have the right to authorize anything except for a look at your paperwork. You did not purchase the right to control the design. You bought a document archive containing the design. Until I discovered a way around your impressive looking roadblock, I did try to convince you to let me at it.

I did not use your name. You own a special letter P. I could see granting your the whole Peerless. Clearly what I created has no Peerless part number, so I will again thank you for promoting me to Altec Engineer.

You seem to have taken great pleasure in creating this playing field so you can engage in Dog-in-the-manger. This would be a reasonable gambit if you had some means of protecting your investment. Since you don't, I am quite curious as to why nobody has gone to the trouble of doing it before.

::::You might be disappointed by my decision regarding the use, building, or disposition of the designs... but it's not your property and hence you have no right to tell me how I should manage my designs\assets\property.

You keep saying that the design is your property. The piece of paper it iw written on might be yours, but the design is up for anyone who wishes to go to the trouble of discovering it. It isn't mine for that matter.

Since it is not yours( no matter how many times you say it, it won't come true ) , you should have considered your action and posture more carefully. You clearly seem unhappy with the idea that I not only know how to wind that one, but that repeating this performance with ANY old unprotected, unavailable OPTx is not only possible but likely.

::::Again, get over it.

Already done. Accomplished it seconds after getting the first quote from Heyboer on the price of constructing those output TX's. The only person around here striking out( in both senses ) is you. I suggest that it is you who should get over it( what ever it is, only you can say ).

And get used to the idea that we did a whole lot better before you called that Labor Day morning to argue with me. You were wrong then, wrong with the same analysis methods for the PP loading discussion, and you're wrong now.

Look at the business you have gotten with Mssr. Lessard designing amps around your products. Do you think that cultivating a folstering and supportive relationship with me would have been any less profitable? The silly thing is that I am still willing to forgive you and prove it.
cheers,
Douglas

I design a lot of stuff and naturally I want to reap some benefits from it. It gives me an advantage over my competition if I have products that are unique and that perform better than my competitors. It also helps if I can make it at a cost lower than my competition.

π Speakers is a small company, so my resources are limited. I cannot make large production runs that take advantage of an economy of scale. I cannot afford to buy as much specialized equipment as I'd like. And I cannot keep an attorney on staff to watch out for me. So I have to leverage what I have.

I can make products that are good, spend time researching them so that they perform the best possible. I can base them on readily available components, which allows me to cut costs on machining and fabricating parts, except for a few things. I can model them with CAD systems that allow me to predict response and reduce the design/prototype/test/produce development cycle time. It limits the number of prototypes I have to build and allows me to test fewer samples compared to empirical build-and-try methods.

What I do is to sell parts to make this worth my while. I'm a parts guy and spend a good deal of my time shipping and receiving. It's a glorious high-status job. I sell complete loudspeaker systems too, but I think where I'm most competitive is parts and kits. By concentrating on that, I can increase my economy of scale so that I can afford to be competitive. My volume is high enough that I can beat the prices of the large parts distributors like Parts Express.

But I do a hell of a lot of work for that. Most distributors do no design work at all. Most are just counter sales, mail-order or online parts houses. So their R&D costs are zero. Mine are pretty significant. I'll spend several hundred hours on a single design sometimes. If I were to do a P&L with my engineering time listed as a debit, π Speakers would always be deeply in the red. This truly is a labor of love, and I take a trickle from it that makes it worthwhile.

What I get is a ton of goodwill. I distribute designs, not giving them away, but letting people use them to build their kits. Sometimes I allow people to use them, just for asking, and they source their own parts. That brings more goodwill. I don't relinquish rights to my plans, but by letting people see them, control is effectively lost. So my business is built almost entirely from goodwill, by supporting people whether they buy from me or not.

Every time I draw up some plans, write a description of a test I've run or make a post on my forum, the document is automatically copyrighted. It is my document, I own it. Once a document is fixed, it is the property of the author, unless the author was paid to write it. When I give a product a unique name, it is my trademark. As soon as I sell it, that trademark is used in commerce in the state I sold it in. If I do business across a few states, it is trademarked in those states, in a particular region. If I register it, it is trademarked across the nation. But whether registered or not, if I do business somewhere with a product of a given unique name, I own that name.

One can patent a product provided they can write a set of claims that are unique. This allows the product to be built by a sole owner, and gives legal rights to police the patent and demand others trying to sell a similar device must stop.

The trouble is, each of these is pretty weak. We kind of have to respect each other because if lawyers get involved, once under attack, the pieces can easily come apart. It becomes a war of attrition. Sometimes you can protect yourself on the front end so well that you aren't very vulnerable, but you still have to pay a lot to get justice. The system really isn't very good.

Trademarks do not last forever, they must be renewed. They can be damaged by misuse or failure to police. A predator will try to find every possible weakness and reason the trademark should not be considered unique. A copyright lasts a long time, but honestly, it isn't much good. The only times I ever see them policed is record companies prosecuting college kids. On the internet, almost everyone is copying things, and there are a bunch out there dead set on making legal precedents that remove intellectual property rights, making copyrights worthless. I think it will swing back the other way, but right now, we're pretty liberal in our views on copyright and plagiarism. Patents are probably the strongest protection, but they don't last very long. By the time your kids are grown, your patent runs out and your design slips into the public domain. Better make your profits quick.

So what's right and what's wrong? Sometimes, I work so hard on a particular loudspeaker design, I become pretty possessive. I begin to feel like the very essence of the design, its style even, is mine. I've seen this in other engineers too. Whenever two engineers walk the same road, you'd hope they would enjoy each other's company but it is inevitable that each feels a bit possessive of that road. They both have a tendency to want to draw a line in the sand, claiming the road their own. I think that's what has happened between Mike and Doug. It's understandable, really.

When patents become not examples of new and innovative design features but instead fractionalize the design parameters to such a degree that there is for all intents and purposes a defining difference between designs of less than the smallest increment possible where does this leave the consumer? There may be some small change in how we wind a widget but should that require a patent protection? We know the rest but it will happen more and more as things and technologies age while the ability of patent holders to research their rights on the internet is advanced.

Second; the best example I see of why patents can be harmfull is the drug industry. Why certain drugs will not be manufactured and the patents will be enforced preventing manufacture by others is a common theme in the health industry.

Third on a personal note (I hate to be personal here but there is no way around it), I like old jazz from the 30's-50's. Much of it is not remastered and sold but it is owned by record companies. In order to acquire these pieces I have only one option; I must find a file sharing service and look for these recordings and download them illegally. If I don't do this I won't have the music because the record companies will not produce unprofitable music.

So that is the connundrum I see. Do companies that do R&D have a responsibility to provide data that can save lives? Do I have the right to copy songs that the recording companies refuse to release due to unprofitability? Does a guy have any rights to reverse engineer a part that he will not get any other way and that he requires to rebuild his existing unit? At what point in the culture does someones right to ownership tread on others rights to participate in the culture?

This one has some similarity to the current discussion:Does a guy have any rights to reverse engineer a part that he will not get any other way and that he requires to rebuild his existing unit?

I have a severe dislike for the game of Dog-in-the-manger.

One could look at several branches to this one, but they all are contained in the 'not get it any other way' idea. If something is unavailable, I see no reason not to go to any required lengths to create it. There must be some specific examples where this might not be a good idea, but none that resemble the current topic.

and another: Do I have the right to copy songs that the recording companies refuse to release due to unprofitability?

The protection was granted to prevent profiting by others than those in possession of the material. If those holding the recordings are not going to release for purchase, I don't see any reason not to acquire them by any means available. I would add that I'd likely purchase them if they ever were made available...

I'd rather focus on the topic at hand. Is there any reason not to to generate the construction instructions on a piece of technology in the public domain, and then to go ahead and create said item?

The current issue has been clouded because there was claim of ownership of the design. It was fairly easy to establish that no such ownership of the design exists, and that it is indeed in the public domain. MQ clearly( or at least claims to ) owns an example of the design and is free to do what ever is deemed acceptable with it. I also own an example of this design. I am not in any position to tell MQ that I own it and they may not reproduce it w/o my permission.

It would be a different story if I had broken into the MQ archive in Phila and found the original drawings and fired up the office copier and made off with xerox's of the designs I wanted. That would have been a direct theft. I did no such illegal thing. That the end result of both actions is the same; I know how to copy the Peerless S265Q, and have done it repeatedly. This would creat an interesting conundrum on first inspection. It is answered by the means by which the public domain design is discovered.

Anyway, that is part of my feelings on the subject.
cheers,
Douglas

:::MQ clearly( or at least claims to ) owns an example of the design and is free to do what ever is deemed acceptable with it. I also own an example of this design. I am not in any position to tell MQ that I own it and they may not reproduce it w/o my permission.:::

so if you own a pair of Wayne's Pi speakers... you have as much ownership of the design as Wayne does?

And you should be able to come onto the ART forums and offer "copies" based on your reverse engineering of Wayne's product? And that Wayne doesn't actually own the design.... but only one "version" or substantiation of the design?

Mike