Re: gEDA-user: copyright on schematics, PCBs etc.

[Daniel J Wisehart <dw@yankee.us.com>]

It depends on what country you live in, but in the US (from 
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wci):

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States 
(title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of "original works of authorship," 
including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other 
intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and 
unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the 
owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do 
the following: 

To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;

To prepare derivative works based upon the work;

...

On Friday 05 November 2004 08:52, Karel Kulhavy wrote:
> Hello
>
> I would like to know which actions are protected by copyright:
> 1) taking someone's printed schematic and redrawing it in another editor
> 2) changing something in a schematic
> 3) as 1), but for PCB
> 4) as 2), but for PCB
> 5) manufacturing electronics according to someone's schematic
>  (e. g. making own PCB or making it airwire)
> 6) manufacturing PCB's according to someone's PCB design.
> 7) Taking and existing PCB, desoldering all the parts, scanning it,
>  putting it as a background into PCB and reconstructing the PCB and
>  retracing the schematics using the component values
>
> Another question: do you mean GNU FDL is a good licence for licencing works
> like Ronja etc.?
>
> Cl<