I think EG can cope just fine without the usual groups harping on about credit, proper licensing and general good taste or big, bad, tuff posturing about killing people based on statements/philosophy over action (I sincerely have no idea what the last commenters are rambling about, but some sources might help*. Preferably something more credible than social media gossip)
-- jingram
You ask, we deliver. From a news article about industry lawsuits on Reverb at https://reverb.com/news/the-true-stories-behind-6-famous-gear-lawsuits
"Behringer Gets Taken To Court Several Times Over
Behringer makes no bones about the fact that it clones other company's designs, capitalizing on cheap labor and parts costs in China and Southeast Asia to offer gear at door–busting low prices. Just recently, Behringer announced its clone of the Minimoog Model D at about a tenth of the price of Moog’s own recently announced reproduction.
Behringer has given the same treatment to products by Boss, Tech 21, Electro–Harmonix, Mackie, Line 6, and more. As mentioned in a comprehensive Create Digital Music post about Behringer’s lawsuits from 2009, the company even cloned Apple’s home page.
That Create Digital Music post gives the most comprehensive and digestible rundown of Behringer’s legal troubles out there. But to summarize:
In 1997, Mackie sued Behringer and its US distributor Samson over cloning its mixers. Mackie won the suit that year, but in 1999 a judge ruled that even though Behringer’s circuit boards were plagiarized, circuit board design is not covered by US copyright law. This basically freed Behringer to clone as it wished. When Mackie released its Onyx line a few years later, Behringer released its Xenyx mixers.
Savvy about the circuit board ruling, Roland took Behringer to court in 2005 for copying the look of its Boss pedals, claiming that Behringer was creating brand confusion. Behringer and Roland settled out of court, and the look of Behringer’s cheaper cloned pedals changed quickly. But the settlement didn’t stop Behringer from copying the look of Line 6’s pedals.
In the Gearslutz thread where founder Uli Behringer announced his plans to manufacture his Model D clone, he offered an alternate story about the Roland debacle and also provided some links to information about the Mackie suit (to a Gearslutz post defending Behringer) and a lawsuit with Peavey that Behringer won.
Cloning, though, has been the company’s bread and butter for much of its tenure as a topseller in the gear business.
Behringer tends to offer two defenses of the cloning. In the post linking to information about the Peavey and Mackie suits, Behringer offers several other links to court briefs about other musical instrument companies infringing copyright. Behringer’s defense there seems to be, more or less, that everyone does it, so why shouldn’t Behringer.
Then in another post in that Gearslutz thread, Behringer offers his more common defense, that his company is trying to get cheap gear into the hands of working musicians.
Whether it’s that noble mission or a cold, calculated market play, Behringer is evidently proud to continue the practice.
Now this isn’t to say that Behringer exclusively clones other company’s products and sells them for less. The company’s new Deepmind 12 poly synth is an all original design, and a praised one to boot. Perhaps the success of something like this will nudge the company into relying more heavily on original designs, like Peavey’s evolution in the 1980s. Or maybe it won’t."
Nuff said, I think. And they didn't even mention the flap between Uli and dbx, which is egregious to the point of total comedy.