Arturia swings back with an official statement and describes the Behringer Swing in the words of Coco Channel: “if you want to be original, be ready to be copied”.
Yesterday Behringer showed the Swing, a new sequencer, for the first time. Everyone noticed that. However, this is not new, it is a blatant clone of the Arturia Keystep controller. More precisely, it’s a knockoff, yes, for many reasons: same design, layout, keys, features, etc. Some comments dodge my ability as a journalist because I don’t treat the Behringer copy in the same way as the Keystep.
Official Arturia Statement
Hello everyone,
We have been informed on Sunday, November the 22nd of the upcoming release of a new product called Swing, by Behringer. This product is in no way the result of a partnership between Arturia and Behringer. We have worked hard to create the _Step range. We have invested time and money to imagine, specify, develop, test, and market the KeyStep. Along with our distributors we have been evangelizing this product, placing it in stores, explaining it, servicing it.
Of course, we accept competition, and would absolutely understand that Berhinger give their own interpretation of a small and smart controller that would also be a sequencer. Others do, we have no problem with that and see good for the customer, as well as for the industry, in fair competition.
But this is not a fair competition here. Coco Chanel once said: “If you want to be original, be ready to be copied”. So we could in a way consider the Swing as a compliment. We could. In any case, thank you, everyone, who came out and supported us these past 36 hours! It’s been very helpful, very much appreciated.
Frédéric Brun
Co-founder and CEO, Arturia
Axel Hartmann Of Design Box Says
Design Box is Axel Hartmann’s industrial design company. They created the look and feel of many instruments for Arturia, Moog, Waldorf, and others. They work on contract for the manufacturer and the manufacturer owns the final work. He writes on Facebook:
So the question in everybodys mind is simply: “Why Arturia, and Roland and Korg, just sue Behringer for patent infringment?” Why so afraid of Uli? Aren’t they prepared to defend their business in an obvious situation that 1) Uli created 2) its easy to prove they were blatantly copied 3) for profit. Why cant an alliance of synth manufacturers join against Behringer? Who’s is afraid? because it isnt Uli who’s afraid.
because none of this would be covered under a patent. but it is covered by copywriter and that’s what Roland ha been doing, although a few decades late. but copywriting the look of the 808 and 909 it caused Uli to redesign the interfaces slightly. Mackie took them to court in the mid 90’s and lost. Berhinger lives in the grey area of the law and there’s not much the companies can do to stop it. of course if we stopped buying their garbage products that would go a long way to ending this stuff but that’s never going to happen.
Thanks bro, good information.