Now you're intentionally trying to obfuscate the question. Cover bands don't claim the material as their own, and the venue is supposed to pay fees, some of which should go to the creator/owner of the song.
If you don't care enough about the design details and intellectual property, that's your call, and it's not a big deal. I don't care enough to dig through the lawsuits and engineering either. But be honest and admit that this is about you not caring, instead of it not being important. You don't have to care about everything important in the world--in fact, it would be impossible for you to do so. But don't offer this BS that because you don't care, it isn't important and must just be some stupid pissing contest. Saying "I don't know and I don't care if company A ripped off company B or not" is much more honest than "it doesn't matter if company A ripped off company B or not."
Again I am probably being misunderstood here. My point is, why as a consumer should I give two halves of a rats furry behind about the the IP claims of company A vs company B. Or in this case Company M vs company B... ? I am not an electrical engineer, nor do I care about the design details, nor am I ignorant enough to say that for example the Behringer XENYX line of mixers are the equal product to the Mackie Onyx pre-amped line of mixers. Yes they have similar features, yes they have design similarites. So does a Chevrolet Cruise and a Ford Focus. I am also intelligent enough to realize they are NOT the same thing, nor are they marketed as the same thing...
It's not like Behringer is slapping the Mackie name or compleely cloning the look of Mackie products. Should Behringer be forced to, let's say move the XLR inputs to the right side on their mixers because Mackies XLR inputs on the left?
My point is, play these legal issues out in a court of law, NOT the court of public opinion. The court of public opinion tends to be very one sided, with lots of un verifiable mud slinging going on, with very little actual facts being given, sort of like a political campaiign. It's dirty, it's a cheaters way to bypass any semblance of justice.
As far as covers goes, again as the consumer, I don't always know about Prior works... As a kid, Kim Wylde had "her" song Keep Me Hangin On went to number 1 on the charts. I can tell you with absolute certainty at that time, absolutely ZERO of my friends, nor myself had any clue that the song had been written or performed by anyone else previously...
Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby was plain as day obvious to us was a sampled rip off of David Bowie's Under Pressure no matter how he argued it, and the courts played it out. Should the people that played that song say at parties etc... be expected to now pay royalties to David Bowie? If so Bowie better get busy suing danged near every single Gen X-er out there...
My issue is NOT that I don't think Behringer did right or wrong, my issues is with others trying to make consumers / users feel guilty for buying an using a product offered up for legal sale in the U.S. And to say it is all based on IT violations, which at least from what I have read about the Mackie case, was thrown out of court due to Mackie not properly protecting their IP, therefore, no protection, not IP...
That is why engineers and engineering firms hire patent attorneys to insure that they have their I's cotted and their Ts crossed. Mackie failed to do so.
So I guess the reason I kicked back so hard on this is the insinuation that the user / consumer is somehow guilty of aiding and abetting a company that is accused of legal violations that were either settled, or thrown out of court as unfounded.
NOBODY told me when I was looking at mixers that a Behringer was the same thing as a Mackie. And as an owner of a Behringer mixer, and having had an opportunity to record through a Mackie mixer, I can tell you in no uncertain terms, that even if Behringer copied the Mackie mixers, they must have done SOMETHING different. Using the same USB interface, mic, cables etc... there is a pronounced difference in the sound recorded, especially vocal. My vocals tend toward baritone, and the Mackie when set flat tends to make my voice sound muddy. I have to turn the mid / highs up and the lows down on that channel. The Behringer is set completely flat to get the same output quality. Am I saying the Behringer is better? Hardly, just different.
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Is it obvious that Behringer modelled their mixer after Mackies? That should go without saying. However the port layout is different, the control layout is different, the Mackie has a superior effects processor, the Behringer housing is more highly styled (more dramatic curvature to the sides, more angular sloping where the upper port region descends to the main panel part etc...).
I have no doubt that at Behringers design stuido they had Mackie products on hand and said "We need to build something that competed with this"... Does that rise to the level of theft? Even if the circuit design which the courts say aren't copyrightable, and Mackie failed to patent. Now they are "prior art" without protection. So re-using those designs is fair game from what I can tell.
So the way I see it, at this point, unless there is something I have not found looking at this, this is no different than say SX or another instrument MFG making cheap copies of Fender classic designs. Plenty of folks here buy, and play those instruments, but NOBODY climbs up their backsides telling them they are somehow evil for buying misappropriated IP. Does SX pay Fender a license fee? I somewhat doubt it.
Consumers for the most part know the difference between a real Fender and a knock off. By the same token, it should be assumed that they know the difference between a Mackie and a Behringer... To assume otherwise is an insult to the consuming public.
So...
Does / did Behringer directly copy other MFGs products? I would have to say no. Not directly. (No fake Mackie stickers etc... on B made products...).
Does / did Behringer copy design ideas from other MFGs? Absolutely they did. As did every single current manufacturer out there. Again if not for industrial duplication and standarization, we would have things like cars with pushbutton automatic transmissions (Chrysler tried that in the 50's and early 60s, it was a dangerous failure). We also wouldn't have fairly standardized electric bass configurations (4 strings, pretty much set scale lengths etc...). This leads to the next issue.
Does / did Behringer copy substantially enough of a competing design to be considered a "copy" of the original products protected IP? I don't know. That is the allegation IN COURT, and one that the courts in some cases said yes (pedals) and in some cases said no (Mixers).
Does / do Behringer products put end users / consumers at an undue safety risk? While the stories about Behringer products going up in smoke are not unheard of, for the most part, somewhat more often than the industry norm, but not unduly dangerous. I would NOT however leave a Behringer mixer / amp / whatever plugged into power and unattended.
Long and short of it, I don't see Behringer behaving in a way that differs all that much from most other corporations. There are similarities between competing products for a reason. If anything Mackie's suit against Behringer really should be a compliment to Behringer, as it effectively says "Behringer is making a copy of our product good enough to hurt our business, and we don't trust consumers to be intelligent enough to tell the difference.".
Did / do Behringers detractors and competitors engage in a PR smear campaign? Judging from the posts here, and elsewhere, I would have to say yes...
It's not like Behringer is out there running over baby harp seals with trucks that run on whale oil, or building gas chambers and utilizing slave labor.
Where they have stepped over the line, they have been properly and duly sanctioned, justice has been served. Can the same be said of other companies? in some cases yes, in many cases no... In many cases, the competitors rely on superior quality to sell their product, not the courts.
I personally didn't have good experiences with Behringer gear, but far be it from me to criticize anyone's choice of gear if it works for them.
