Are Wavetables protected under Copyright?

[stepanova]

This is a very good question, and the answer's no, individual wavetables are not protected under copyright.

Every time this question comes up on a forum somewhere, a rep from one of the big synth makers pops up to say yes, you can't touch our wavetables … these answers have become a kind of message board common law on the matter.

But e.g. US copyright law is clear - in sound recordings it is a series of recorded sounds that is protected. And a wavetable, which must loop by definition, is not a series of sounds, it's the underlying timbre of a single sound.

The collection of wavetables that comes with a synth _is_ copyright though, e.g. US law again: "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship."

Because of this copyright in the collection, the synth maker can make you sign a license agreement before you can use the wavetables in your own recordings, and if you've signed that EULA you're on tricky ground redistributing individual samples, because (again in the US at least) there is a move in the courts towards treating EULAs more like regular contracts.

If you haven't signed a EULA and you acquired the wavetables legally, it seems pretty clear that you can legally process and redistribute individual wavetables (not the collection).

None of this has been tested though, it'd be a long and expensive business and a big risk to take because courts in the US and Europe can make counter-factual decisions in copyright test cases.

So I wouldn't do it

Give yr patches away, without the wavetables, make everybody happy

[phreaque]

This is a very good question, and the answer's no, individual wavetables are not protected under copyright.

Every time this question comes up on a forum somewhere, a rep from one of the big synth makers pops up to say yes, you can't touch our wavetables … these answers have become a kind of message board common law on the matter.

But e.g. US copyright law is clear - in sound recordings it is a series of recorded sounds that is protected. And a wavetable, which must loop by definition, is not a series of sounds, it's the underlying timbre of a single sound.

The collection of wavetables that comes with a synth _is_ copyright though, e.g. US law again: "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship."

Because of this copyright in the collection, the synth maker can make you sign a license agreement before you can use the wavetables in your own recordings, and if you've signed that EULA you're on tricky ground redistributing individual samples, because (again in the US at least) there is a move in the courts towards treating EULAs more like regular contracts.

If you haven't signed a EULA and you acquired the wavetables legally, it seems pretty clear that you can legally process and redistribute individual wavetables (not the collection).

None of this has been tested though, it'd be a long and expensive business and a big risk to take because courts in the US and Europe can make counter-factual decisions in copyright test cases.

So I wouldn't do it

Give yr patches away, without the wavetables, make everybody happy

Perfectly explained, thanks a lot mate for this detailed input...

[jackbeenimble]

To necro an old thread, from a physics standpoint I don't see how a single cycle waveform could be copyrighted. It is a trivial matter to restructure the wavetable to contain diff values and play the same sound eg shift to a different zero crossing, phase invert, subtle morph. Not to mention that would be kind of like copyrighting a color. Anyways that's the logical assessment. However, is it cool to like rip all the Serum Wavetables and market it as a package of sounds to designers? That's a lot more shady. While the wavetables are the colors in something like Serum, it's the robustness of the thing that makes it worth the money. You can get single cycles anywhere.