source file: m1562.txt
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 15:33:56 -0600 (MDT)

Subject: Re: Yamaha 19 keyboard

From: John Starrett <jstarret@tiger.cudenver.edu>

All-
	It may be that microtonality, and specifically, 19TET will become 
popular with the general public at some time in the future. The fact that 
Yamaha actually paid to patent a keyboard implementation indicates that 
they take the possibility a little seriously. They may well try to 
patent other instruments in a variety of tunings, and there is 
nothing to prevent them from doing so but a good prior art search. I 
am not being a Chicken Little when I say that when a large corporation 
patents a well known idea, someone may be in for trouble. You may recall 
that a number of years ago, Ned Steinberger prevented a number of competing 
manufacturers from marketing micrometer style tuners, even though there 
was plenty of prior art to prove that he did not invent the idea (see the 
guitar in Thomas Jefferson's Monticello home).

John Starrett
http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret