believe "Happy Birthday" song was and is of pattent (something like that), or was that some similar song.
Martin/VaraLite/High End verses Color Kinetics and various other brands. Pattent rights and technology don't always get along. Intellectulal property when it's an in-common problem thus solution and or something that becomes so
base that it solves problems and short of paying someone for the rights tends to stand in the way of advancement. This granted that some of the copying that goes on in China these days is more reverse engineering and re-production cheaper of the exact same product, at some
point the tech details of pattents get expensive and important only to the lawyers.
Remember at one
point Martin lost a law suite and were for a time no longer allowed to sell their product in the US. On another post, I remember hearing something about
Altman having to pay $6.00 for each Shakesphere produced to
ETC... to which I don't doubt as possible and or as something I believe I have heard before as possible confirmed or not. Given lawsuites, It's not hard to believe that
Altman would have to give
ETC money for each
fixture they produce even if totally different
fixture on most all ways.
At some
point say 20 years from now, I would hope that lawyers
play less a
role in what we pay in costs for the equipment we buy, and there might be some intellectulal property revisions by way of
base idea say verses how specifically it's done. This given I'm not taking sides in what any number of lawsuites of the past have lead to - all no doubt haver merits.
LED technology is new and hip, what develops is under study all around. Litegating only makes lawyers money in the end. Like a stream of water, it's hard to dam it up properly without allowing it to flow naturally in where it wants to go.
From what I understand about the Phillips GLA/GLC lamp, it once was available with a removable
heat sink that allowed it to go into a
ETC fixture. Even still have some in
stock and they work. Different
filament but the concept by way of Phillips, was a universal lamp - now how cool would that be in having a lamp that would fit both one's older say
360Q's and S-4's? It really is the same
base of lamp other than
filament type and
heat sink... None the less, Phillips had to pull this product from the market and buy the rights to produce the
HPL line of lamp
ETC owns the rights to. As opposed to all
ANSI lamps (
HPL types are not
ANSI lamps),
ETC owns the rights to the design of all lamps that fit into their fixtures.
I surmise because of this, there as above is no universial removable
heat sink HPL lamps on the market that in using the refined
filament of a
HPL can work where a GLC might have wanted to work. Had
ETC wished the above Phillips lamp to stay on the market and open up a universal lamp, they will have, but than again they would no longer control the pattent to that lamp.
One will note however how old the
HPL lamp is without an upgrade. The HPR lamp is an upgrade in some ways to the HX-600/FLK or GLC. Osram either cannot upgrade the
HPL to a
reflector version of it due to as they said a more complex
filament, or due to litegation problems with
ETC - I do not know for sure. This is all some concepts where copywrite is at very least standing in the way of further development - by way of the universal lamp again that will fit in all types of
Leko, or the internal
reflector - very simple technology that to this date years later is still yet to be seen in a
HPL lamp. What's another 15 to 20% more efficient beam of light anyway?
ETC does not have copywrite to it nor would thus it gets complex. What's a universal lamp, Phillips had to at some
point stop producing this universal lamp and buy the rights to produce the
HPL lamps - and boy were they pissed when they found out that Ushio and Osram were doing
ceramic sinks about the time they were just introducing their version of aluminum ones. (Not that any one is better than another in reality.) Anyway... copywrite stuff. Useful, but in some ways it's in the way of real advances based upon such technology.
My opinion at least - copywrite laws need more refinement to keep up with modern tecnnology. This much less I'm sure that VeriLite persay has much less an intellectural problem with
Martin developing similar technology than some company in China making an exact copy of a
fixture. AT least at the component
level for the
Martin type thing, it's a
base of how it works concept but different
fixture after that, as opposed to cheaper cloan that's 100% reverse engineered and copied. Chevy learns from Ford, Ford later learns from Chevy. My opinion at least - given if proven copy, I don't have a problem with the above $6.00 per
fixture cost of copied technology, just wish it did not also come with say a $10.00 also added cost that comes from the lawyer bill for such a lawsuite.