908ssp wrote:Actually you guys don't understand intellectual property rights. You're confusing it with patents and inventions. Nothing fundamentally new has to be invented or designed for their to be intellectual property rights any thing that Ken showed Gerald under a stipulation of renumeration belongs to Ken. If Kens say put this wire there and that wire there and Gerald agrees to pay him for that and doesn't it means he broke his promise and should refrain from using that information. A contract doesn't have to be on paper, if there is a clear understanding that one party is to pay another party for work performed and then doesn't do that he has breached the contract. It doesn't mater if he makes any money or not unless that too was clearly understood before hand. If the project was not going as Gerald expected he should have shut it down or renegotiated the contract. It seems clear that they never came to terms and the only reason Gerald wasn't held to task was it is too expensive to sue.
I guess Alex you should explain to us all what Ken Fischer has done that nobody else did before him and before him that we should not be able to do. Ken fisher laid a wire at a 90 degree bend so, if I want to bend wire at 90 degrees and not 91 degrees I should send him a check??? My friend respectfully, you have drunk the KF Kool-Aide
What you described as "intellectual property" is simply work for hire. Intellectual property includes patents and inventions, trademarks copyrights, service marks, trade names, and designs (my wife was an IP paralegal).
You can acquire rights to intellectual property by applying for them or by registering them. In doing so, you have to show (among other things) they are unique in particular ways and not in the public domain. Except for the TW trade name and logo, nothing about the Climax appears to me to be intellectual property, as it has been in the public domain. As has been discussed, the design of the Express is based on other amps, including Fenders and Marshalls. Ken worked at Ampeg and may have developed his spin on these designs while there or from Ampeg engineers -- should Ampeg, Fender, and Marshall share in this? The clean channel in the Climax is pure Fender, who has sharp-toothed lawyers chasing people these days that Fender believes is using their intellectual property. (Fenders lawsuits aren't about electronic design, but rather trade and service marks used in marketing.)
I don't think Ken was teaching Gerald how to build amps. Gerald was supposed to build TW amps for Ken because he was physically unable to do so. (Many people on this forum are building Express clones without Ken's help, so Gerald could have easily duplicated a TW on his own.)
If production were shut down (as you suggested be done) when it became known that the cost of the Climax was excessive should Ken have reimbursed Kendrick for all the money spent up front preparing for it?
The answer to this and questions about who gets what share of the money (or pays the bills in the case of failure) depends on the agreement between Ken and Gerald. Was Ken just an engineer for hire, paid to do a specific job or was he a partner in a joint venture? The answer depends on the specifics of the agreement between Ken and Gerald, which we don't know.
If the agreement was unspecific or incompete and there was no clear common understanding, then there was NO agreement. In that case, no one could have breeched it. I suspect this is what happened because there was no lawsuit that I am aware of, although Ken had legal representation that investigated the finances and other areas. That's why I stated earlier than the main problem was the lack of a clear, written contract that covered how to divide the profits and losses in case the Climax project turned out differently than predicted.
BTW, if Ken prevailed in his lawsuit, he could have asked for lawyers' fees in addition to any actual and punitive damages.
I don't know exactly who did what to whom, so I am always surpised that people assume that Gerald built the Climax without Ken's permission or any remuneration. Neither of these is true, but what happened is more than we know. These guys were good friends at one time and, if the project went as hoped, they would still be friends and we could buy and sell the TW Climax on eBay without some a****le saying we can't. (;->
