Re: Steppophonic Looperformer - please steal this!

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

mark says
> BUT TO ANOTHER POINT... Per raises in my mind... one that maybe those 
> WITH the programming powers can answer, or those involved in product 
> design. How DOES one protect ones idea (of course I realise Per as NOT 
> done this, as he has made it available under Creative Commons, but its 
> still protection of a sort)
> What CAN you patent? What if you have no plans of caperbilities to 
> produce yourself.. but still believe one has an original idea?
> 

If you're a "creative" software developer then what tends to happen is
that you kind of soak up any ideas you hear, forgetting where they 
came from...and quite likely they become your own "innovation" some
time later.

Most ideas connected with looping, especially the ones the folks like
us find appealing have "no commercial potential", so I tend to mention
any ideas that quite freely, in the knowledge that
I'd be highly unlikely ever to be credited for their use, and quite likely
the idea comes from some email I read a couple of years ago. 
In any case,
it's one thing to have an idea, and quite another to implement it in
software. It's fun to come up with the ideas, but a lot of hard work
and frustration to actually turn those ideas into reality. 

In the DSP world, patents are something of a problem. The big companies
dedicate time to claiming innovation as their own, and small time
developers are at a disadvantage. Even if you get a patent, a company
like Roland
can find a way to legally take the idea (they keep a check on new
patents for this very purpose).



hey, and anyway, the paint that shows tv pics is *my* idea ;-)

andy