Reply To: Roger Linn’s Take on Companies Stealing His Intellectual Property

[Peter DeLegge]

Well, it is definitively stealing intellectual property because when it uses the samples. Consider if someone were to take samples used by a modern developer and resell it as their own product. Roland is the one company I know us very aggressive about pursing IP infringement  I know because, over the past two decades, I’ve given three developers advice who infringed on Roland’s IP.  Rhodes is another very aggressive brand when it comes to dealing with IP infringement.

The reality for Roger Linn is likely that he doesn’t have the budget to retain an IP law firm to handle this stuff,  so he turns the other way, but it doesn’t feel good to have that happen. I had a number of companies infringe upon my company’s IP — some of it incredibly blatant —
but for a small business, the costs of hiring an IP law firm simply is out of the question. It’s very costly to manage that and that’s part of the reason that so many companies steal other companies IP without much concern.

As far as ethics, I realize that more than 90% of the market simply doesn’t care about this stuff. I suppose it has been being in the business world and observing bad ethics and seeing their impact on people that I came to care about it. Innovators like Linn deserve to ve compensated for their work, not ripped off.

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