Anyone have a good mutual NDA they can share?

S

speff

Guest
As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com>
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard
 
On Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 10:07:47 AM UTC-4, speff wrote:
As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

When you say "mutual", rather than complicate an agreement that is reciprocal, I would suggest a document that defines the terms for protecting the IP of one party and then signing two separate agreements, one for each party's IP.

For some reason it seems common to set a time limit that covers material being included but to have the protection unlimited in time. The protection period should end when the material is publicly disclosed.

I would share an NDA I signed but it is covered by the NDA... seriously!

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
 
On 2020-04-11 12:16, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.

One company sent me an NDA that was so insane that I just walked. They
offered to use one of mine, but my take was that any company whose
management thought the original was an OK contract was _way_ too
dangerous to get involved with.

A pity--it would have been a very interesting project with some smart
people.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.






--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:31:13 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-11 12:16, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.

One company sent me an NDA that was so insane that I just walked. They
offered to use one of mine, but my take was that any company whose
management thought the original was an OK contract was _way_ too
dangerous to get involved with.

A pity--it would have been a very interesting project with some smart
people.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

One big outfit decided to design our products out but their lawyers
read the NDA and were horrified that we actually owned our IP. Little
people like us shouldn't be allowed to own IP, I guess.

So they bought the IP and started a couple of design teams doing the
redesign. Three years later, they are still hard at it, still buying
our gear, and we still have the money from selling the IP. We did the
original products in six months.

Moral: if you sell things to an OEM, maintain your IP rights in a fair
mutual NDA. Refuse their grabs. If they really need the stuff now,
they will sign something symmetrical.

I'm impressed by how many non-electronic companies want to design
their own electronics because they think it will be dirt cheap to
manufacture, and they also think we don't deserve to sell anything at
above parts+labor+5%. In a company started by physicists or biologists
or whatever, the EEs are peasants and everybody knows it. The
scientists are the superstars. It often doesn't turn out well.

If one sets up a sufficiently large design team with enough managers,
a product may never get finished.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard
 
On 4/11/2020 12:56 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:31:13 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-11 12:16, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.

One company sent me an NDA that was so insane that I just walked. They
offered to use one of mine, but my take was that any company whose
management thought the original was an OK contract was _way_ too
dangerous to get involved with.

A pity--it would have been a very interesting project with some smart
people.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

One big outfit decided to design our products out but their lawyers
read the NDA and were horrified that we actually owned our IP. Little
people like us shouldn't be allowed to own IP, I guess.

So they bought the IP and started a couple of design teams doing the
redesign. Three years later, they are still hard at it, still buying
our gear, and we still have the money from selling the IP. We did the
original products in six months.

Moral: if you sell things to an OEM, maintain your IP rights in a fair
mutual NDA. Refuse their grabs. If they really need the stuff now,
they will sign something symmetrical.

I'm impressed by how many non-electronic companies want to design
their own electronics because they think it will be dirt cheap to
manufacture, and they also think we don't deserve to sell anything at
above parts+labor+5%. In a company started by physicists or biologists
or whatever, the EEs are peasants and everybody knows it. The
scientists are the superstars. It often doesn't turn out well.

If one sets up a sufficiently large design team with enough managers,
a product may never get finished.

a lot of analog circuit design has been forgotten so you can sell a
tweaked Wien-bridge oscillator design for 2 grand and they'll be like
"wow you're just giving us your IP? that is so generous" and then they
can run to the patent office.
 
On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.

But if they spell your name "John Lorkin" you're in the clear, yeah?
Who's "John Lorkin"?
 
On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.

The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

<https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/>

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!
 
On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.

Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:27:39 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.



The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!

Clear copyright violation.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard
 
On 4/11/2020 19:56, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
....

I'm impressed by how many non-electronic companies want to design
their own electronics because they think it will be dirt cheap to
manufacture, and they also think we don't deserve to sell anything at
above parts+labor+5%. In a company started by physicists or biologists
or whatever, the EEs are peasants and everybody knows it. The
scientists are the superstars. It often doesn't turn out well.

If one sets up a sufficiently large design team with enough managers,
a product may never get finished.

Do you actually remember one of that sort of companies which *did*
come up with a real product at the end? I myself have yet to see one.
And I have seen people and companies trying for decades (that's right,
decades).

We don't have much experience with big companies so your insight
about NDAs in such a case might hopefully be useful to us one day...

I am pretty relaxed about the NDA side for now.
So far we have only had a few (can think of 3 right away) customers
who bought our units only hoping to be able to replicate & rebox them.
Which proved as hopeless as I knew it was, *I* would have been helpless
to do that without documentation and I have designed & programmed it
all.

Dimiter

======================================================
Dimiter Popoff, TGI http://www.tgi-sci.com
======================================================
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/
 
On 4/11/2020 2:30 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 4/11/2020 2:18 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:27:39 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700,
jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both
parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I
don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly
get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's
name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's
the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime
rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time
clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion
dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a
real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.



The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!

Clear copyright violation.



Seems unlikely, Behringer is pretty smart about staying within the
letter of the law on stuff like that, if not the spirit. It's a
cable-tester, the circuit is not novel or under patent protection, and
there are many knock-off designs of it by other companies, too.

Apple can enforce a "trade dress" copyright because they're Apple
products they paid some design firm 100 million to design.

The enclosure/"Design language" I mean
 
On 4/11/2020 2:18 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:27:39 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.



The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!

Clear copyright violation.

Seems unlikely, Behringer is pretty smart about staying within the
letter of the law on stuff like that, if not the spirit. It's a
cable-tester, the circuit is not novel or under patent protection, and
there are many knock-off designs of it by other companies, too.

Apple can enforce a "trade dress" copyright because they're Apple
products they paid some design firm 100 million to design. Copyright a
bland box with jacks and buttons on it? doubtful.

Even so the CA court took a dim view of a billion-dollar Chinese
manufacturing company harassing Americans with libel suits over their
opinions about it, correct or not...piss off!
 
On 4/11/2020 2:32 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 4/11/2020 2:30 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 4/11/2020 2:18 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:27:39 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700,
jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both
parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I
don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly
get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's
name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership.
That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime
rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time
clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion
dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but
a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.



The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!

Clear copyright violation.



Seems unlikely, Behringer is pretty smart about staying within the
letter of the law on stuff like that, if not the spirit. It's a
cable-tester, the circuit is not novel or under patent protection, and
there are many knock-off designs of it by other companies, too.

Apple can enforce a "trade dress" copyright because they're Apple
products they paid some design firm 100 million to design.

The enclosure/"Design language" I mean

Stuff being copied is the way the free-market is supposed to work; one
company selling the same cable-tester design for decades expecting it to
be a lifetime revenue-stream for them and the government to be the heavy
coming out to bat for them in defense of their inertia is arguably, the
aberration.

The Constitution offers the IP protections it does and if your gear
isn't well-covered then you take your chances I guess, bad for the
producer but pretty good for the consumer.
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 14:30:55 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 2:18 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:27:39 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.



The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!

Clear copyright violation.



Seems unlikely, Behringer is pretty smart about staying within the
letter of the law on stuff like that, if not the spirit. It's a
cable-tester, the circuit is not novel or under patent protection, and
there are many knock-off designs of it by other companies, too.

It's legal to copy a circuit design that's not patented. It's not
legal to copy the lettering and fonts and general graphics. Copyright
law protects stuff like that.

They're not very smart if they can't design their own cable tester.

Some people have tried to copy a few of our products. It got them
blackballed by some good customers.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 21:36:03 +0300, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

On 4/11/2020 19:56, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
....

I'm impressed by how many non-electronic companies want to design
their own electronics because they think it will be dirt cheap to
manufacture, and they also think we don't deserve to sell anything at
above parts+labor+5%. In a company started by physicists or biologists
or whatever, the EEs are peasants and everybody knows it. The
scientists are the superstars. It often doesn't turn out well.

If one sets up a sufficiently large design team with enough managers,
a product may never get finished.



Do you actually remember one of that sort of companies which *did*
come up with a real product at the end? I myself have yet to see one.
And I have seen people and companies trying for decades (that's right,
decades).

Sometimes they do get something to work.

There is the business school "sunk cost fallacy" that keeps them
pouring money into a thing like this. Too many managers are involved
and no one of them will raise their hand and point out the obvious.

Eventually there is enough engineering turnover that it settles to
steady-state, no progress. Nobody passes on what they learned when
they quit, or even their emails. We have fun with that.

I one case I'm involved, they just put a bunch of non-functional boxes
into the systems and pretend that they work. Roughly a million dollars
per year worth, since 2003.


We don't have much experience with big companies so your insight
about NDAs in such a case might hopefully be useful to us one day...

One suggestion is that you should be wary of a customer that has an
internal electronic design team. They have management's ear, want to
do it themselves, and can make extravagent promises about cost and
schedules. They will be happy to let you design a prototype to show
them how it's done. My win rate in such situations is zero.

The aerospace companies are best to work with. Physics and biology
based, less so. Semiconductor companies are the worst.


I am pretty relaxed about the NDA side for now.
So far we have only had a few (can think of 3 right away) customers
who bought our units only hoping to be able to replicate & rebox them.
Which proved as hopeless as I knew it was, *I* would have been helpless
to do that without documentation and I have designed & programmed it
all.

Dimiter

======================================================
Dimiter Popoff, TGI http://www.tgi-sci.com
======================================================
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard
 
On 4/11/2020 4:28 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!

Clear copyright violation.



Seems unlikely, Behringer is pretty smart about staying within the
letter of the law on stuff like that, if not the spirit. It's a
cable-tester, the circuit is not novel or under patent protection, and
there are many knock-off designs of it by other companies, too.

It's legal to copy a circuit design that's not patented. It's not
legal to copy the lettering and fonts and general graphics. Copyright
law protects stuff like that.
They didn't copy the fonts or logos at all as far as I can see, the
overall logo-style looks rather different. No reasonable person would
mistake them as being made by the same company it says "BEHRINGER" in
big letters in their own logo-design on the top.

The layout of the jacks and LEDs are the same and the functional labels
of those parts are the same, you can't design-copyright the placement of
a jack that says "IN" or an LED that says "POWER" as far as I know.
those are pure-functional elements.

> They're not very smart if they can't design their own cable tester.

Nah but they are richer. There was more $$$ to be made by copying and it
wasn't judged by their lawyers to be something they'd ever face a real
claim on and so far the original company hasn't been able to pin
anything on 'em (or at least get anyone to take such a case.) Winning!

Trump The Game -- "It's not whether you win or lose, but whether you win!"

<https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Game-whether-lose-Donald/dp/B002CFWTOG>

Some people have tried to copy a few of our products. It got them
blackballed by some good customers.
 
On 4/11/2020 4:28 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 14:30:55 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 2:18 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:27:39 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 1:00 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:50:53 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 4/11/2020 12:16 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:44:00 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 07:07:41 -0700 (PDT), speff <spehro@gmail.com
wrote:

As title, looking for something that is reasonably fair to both parties, not the usual master-slave boilerplate bs.

Thanks for any pointers,

--Spehro Pefhany

There seems to be an industry-standard one that is fair to both
parties and makes perfect sense. But it's Saturday morning and I don't
think I have one here at home. I'll poke around, and certainly get you
one on Monday.

I could tell stories.

I found one on a backup drive and edited out the other company's name.
I'll email it to you. We don't even need an NDA!

It didn't stop them from stealing a schematic at a design review and
giving it to a competitor, who copied our equalized line driver
circuit. But they got caught.

It did make us a lot of money when they found that they couldn't
design us out, because they'd acknowleged our IP ownership. That's the
advantage of an NDA for people like us: we can lock down a big fish.

We have refused to sign NDAs that gave the big corp lifetime rights to
everything we ever did or would do. That's insane but people still
try.


Official-sounding NDAs that I get sent sometimes from small-time clients
seem to make them feel better but often contain provisions that are
laughably un-enforcable and over-broad like I owe you 1 billion dollars
if I ever speak to anyone about this for the rest of my life. but a real
lawyer signed that! so it must be the law

Big companies will also ask you to indemnify them against billions of
dollars of liabilities, and prove that you have insurance policies to
that effect. Nice try.



The LEFTIST COURT SYSTEMS of California and Massachusetts for that
matter tend to have little-guy-friendly views about large corporations
throwing their weight around like that e.g.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/06/20/behringer-dave-smith-libel-case/

Piss the hell off, China-assholes!

Clear copyright violation.



Seems unlikely, Behringer is pretty smart about staying within the
letter of the law on stuff like that, if not the spirit. It's a
cable-tester, the circuit is not novel or under patent protection, and
there are many knock-off designs of it by other companies, too.

It's legal to copy a circuit design that's not patented. It's not
legal to copy the lettering and fonts and general graphics. Copyright
law protects stuff like that.

They're not very smart if they can't design their own cable tester.

Some people have tried to copy a few of our products. It got them
blackballed by some good customers.

A court/judge would probably totally agree that the Behringer box is a
shameless China-copy of the original design. but then case dismissed
because "failure to state a claim." Yeah? And? what part of IP law did
they violate.

Let the market sort it out
 

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