[conspire] Patents & copyrights, ideas & expressions

[Ross Bernheim]

Rick,

Having spent a number of years with schematics, I can attest to the fact that they
are an expression of creativity just as a map or book are. 

It was easy to tell the style of the engineer who drew the particular schematic if 
you have a number of examples of their style. Much like an artist has a particular
visual style. 

When in charge of engineers, I had specific requirements for the schematics that
they submitted. Some were not functional, but stylistic. For example, several 
segments of the circuit may have the same ground, but drawing connections 
between different functional sections in order to share a ground symbol was
a no go for aesthetic reasons as well as it would make it easy to trace via the
ground and go to the other functionally unrelated section. When I submitted 
a schematic for a portion of a design to the engineer to show them what I 
wanted or as a suggestion, it was easy to tell my style from his when he 
incorporated my schematic into his.

Ross

> On Sep 21, 2015, at 10:51 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com <mailto:rick at linuxmafia.com>> wrote:
> 
> 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.
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