Behringer sued by Roland

[Arno van der Heijden]

It had to happen:  :twisted:

http://www.rolandus.com/news/pressdetails.asp?PressID=399

[Ge_Whiz]

I hereby declare the Hammond 1590B with a range of coloured paints and a stompswitch to be my effects pedal "trade dress". You will all be hearing from my lawyers.

A chance to buy cheap, decent pedals - it had to be stopped.

[george]

check out paragraph 2:

"BOSS has long been an industry leader in the design and manufacture of guitar effects pedals, recording equipment and other musical instrument accessories. In addition to their unparalleled sound, the BOSS pedals feature a unique combination of aesthetic design elements which have served to establish BOSS as an instantly-recognizable brand and to distinguish BOSS pedals from pedals manufactured by others."

i bet some lazy (?) journalist will just quote this whole press release verabtim - so much for unbiased coverage

Behringer were saying on their website that the anticipated release was 2nd quarter of 2005 - I guess that's been put back a bit.

[MartyMart]

OF COURSE it was going to happen !!
Behringer ( "rip-off -ringer" ) have overstepped the mark once again and well,  they deserve everything they get  :roll:
Couldn't "MXR" have done that with the 1590B  ??

BTW:  Shame though, the idea of three delays ( cheap ) was quite interesting . . . . .  :oops:

Marty.

[maximee]

DANG! I need a stompbox sized tuner CHEAP!

[mikeb]

Yay for Roland (this time).  

Mike

[puretube]

[Ge_Whiz]

I reckon the best move for Deadringer at this stage would be to withdraw the product line, apologize to Roland, release the effects in a different box and cash in on all the free publicity this will have brought.  

[puretube]

d`ya think they already have made millions of different boxes in advance,
and just showed their NAMM prototypes in those B*ss & E-H look boxes
to draw attention?

[PeterJ]

It's paragraph 4 that looks like it's more damaging to Behringer:

"The Complaint alleges that in an effort to gain industry acceptance of the cloned pedals, Behringer falsely assured industry retailers that the Behringer line of pedals was approved and endorsed by Roland."

PJJ

[maximee]

puretube: that would explain why they only showed CG renderings of those pedals on their website

[casey]

"Roland contends that this is no coincidence, and that the overall look and feel of the Behringer pedals is intentionally designed to confuse consumers as to the origin...?"

that part is a little cheesy....  one box will say "behringer, and the other boss......

i was looking forward to seeing how they sounded.....

[Torchy]

crp

[puretube]

price will be double (50Euro) when they`re issued:
now they are "the famous little pedals that B*ss was so afraid of"...

[petemoore]

Suprizing !!! That B would be so blatant about infringing, Surprizing to the point that I offer:...perhaps there's something we're not aware of going on here...by the way it snowed very heavily here last night.
 Whatever the case, here we are typing about Roland and Behringer...freely and publicly.
 I don't recall Roland doing much to cause me to lose respect for the company...I know I bought alotta Boss pedals, and never had a problem with any of them [except noise]...even after they all got replaced with DIY units [except the RV3].

[javacody]

I have a Behringer GM108 (copy of Tech21 Trademark10), I got it on ebay for $50! What a great sounding little amp.

I don't blame Boss for wanting to keep their product differentiated and for defending their market. Good for them. I will still buy Behringer products though. Why? I can give you dozens of reasons:

*My son needs a new pair of glasses (do you know how expensive glasses are?)
*My family needs a second car
*The pedals sound really, really good, for a fraction of what they cost from the competitors
*I've got thousands of dollars of medical bills from my daughter being in the hospital

I really look up to the companies like Behringer who find a way to bring me cool sounding stuff on a shoe string budget (Danelectro, too). If you have a family and are living off of only one income, maybe you can understand what I'm talking about. The fact of the matter is, if it weren't for Behringer, I sure wouldn't be buying the other makers stuff, I couldn't afford it, so Behringer isn't really hurting the competition, in my view. Behringers stuff also seems not to be built quite as sturdy as the competition's, so if I were a gigging musician (and had the income to actually support my playing), I would definitely buy the expensive stuff.

Now you guys can go back to ranting about how evil Behringer is.  

[lethargytartare]

That's more to the point of addressing the elements of the claim (I'll spare you the discussion of the prima facie case...)  Consumer confusion is the big issue, so they will say specifically that that confusion is going to happen.

In any event, there are plenty of ways they could make a durable box for their effects, and if they're actually as good, people will gobble them up...mimicing the box is just a way to scrounge some extra sales...

It's possible they knew this was a gambit, and were thinking that they might get lucky and get the case in front of people unfamiliar with the market who might decide the boxes didn't look alike...

"Roland contends that this is no coincidence, and that the overall look and feel of the Behringer pedals is intentionally designed to confuse consumers as to the origin...?"

that part is a little cheesy....  one box will say "behringer, and the other boss......

i was looking forward to seeing how they sounded.....

[moving_electrons]

It is always interesting to hear people on a clone info exchange website get indignant about some of Behringer’s products.  Before you slam Behringer to hard for producing some low cost products that are aimed at being workalikes consider the following:

1) Our competitive system always has needed to strike a balance between return for the originator of an implementation and the need to have "fast followers" emerge to drive prices down and improve quality.

2) Many Behringer products have significant engineering content.  Example: DEQ2496.  The main contribution there is the DSP software and user interface.  What is this a copy of?  Nothing I can see.  Good breakthrough in price/performance.

3) Keep in mind that engineering "design for low cost manufacture" *is* a significant engineering and company contribution.

4) And lastly to be consistent, if you are a PC user, make sure you buy only IBM PCs.  Make sure there are no VIA or AMD chips.  Perhaps only Cisco networking. To be extra sure, make sure that supporting electronic components are not made in Taiwan.  If you use a mac or iPod make sure you do no use any add on with the same color or has a matching form factor.

I am not trying to say that a company should not abide by the legal rules.  I am saying that we have a competitive (to a great extent) economic system that in all product types benefits from fast followers.  It is a real nuisance for an innovator if they are slow moving, want to keep things static or want to keep premium prices.  And competitive outcomes are often very harsh for companies and individuals.  But in aggregate the system has had good benefits and has worked pretty well for at least a century.

[puretube]

now they write this:

This BEHRINGER product has been designed to compete head to head with the Electro-Harmonix® Small Stoneâ,,¢*.

but at NAMM, they wrote that it was designed or modeled after the SS (or similar - got to find a copy of that press-release...)

so they stepped back already

also the boxes don`t have that B*ss-looking letterings anymore:
http://www.behringer.com/TO100/index.cfm?lang=ENG

[SaBer]

also the boxes don`t have that B*ss-looking letterings anymore:
http://www.behringer.com/TO100/index.cfm?lang=ENG

They have also changed the colors, btw.