[conspire] Patents & copyrights, ideas & expressions

[Nick Moffitt]

(skipping the facts and going straight to the first open question)

Rick Moen:
> It is not obvious to me that a PCB schematic has a lot of creativity
> in the form or manner of expression of its drawing.  You do not look
> at a schematic and say 'Hey, that looks like a Leonardo di Vinci
> schematic; I recognise his style!'.  So, I would imagine that
> redrawing any schematic means you are applying your own creativity to
> its expression, if it even makes sense to say that a schematic is a
> creative work of expression at all.

While it's possible to apply stylistic changes to the expression of the
symbols in a schematic, most of the creativity goes into the layout.  A
central bus may be drawn as a set of wires at the center, with parts
arranged radially off of it, or as a large containing box with
connections between or within the grand loop.  A circuit tends to be a
complex 3D shape of which the schematic is a 2D projection, and in that
projection there is room for interpretation even when the fundamental
result is not changed at all.

And so I'd wager that one could see hints of style in a schematic's
layout.  One might say something like "oh look, this one has the power
supply control at the middle and everything else around it--that's
because Alice is old school." or "Yeah, Bob always puts the most
delicate chip at the middle, and all the analogue stuff on the left."  

To a large degree computers do schematic layout for us now, and the
compromises they make tend to be accepted or worked around in
frustration.  It's possible to reduce things to a sort of "normal form"
this way, but schematics are like code: some people have Strong Opinions
on the aesthetics.

Consider that Beck's underground map was inspired by his training as an
electrical engineer.  His original (we have a tea tray with a 1933
edition) is very different from today's, and people are still coming up
with new compromises between abstraction and accuracy (although
apparently not keeping it up to date...):

    http://www.london-tubemap.com/