I don't know... but they didn't change much the UI for many older synths. Maybe some kind of patent expiration at play here ? I'm not into legal matters.

I suppose the interface might be covered by design patents, which are sort of like trademarks. I doubt it would be covered by a utility patent unless there was something really unusual about the interface. At any rate, patents expire after 20 years, and trademarks do not. Copyright could theoretically come into play, but I think the "look and feel" lawsuit pretty much established that it's pretty darned hard to enforce any kind of copyright on a user interface.

Some of the very old synths that Behringer has been cloning were probably protected by utility patents that covered the electrical circuits, but those have long expired, and I think trademarks become unenforceable if your aren't actively selling a product that uses it anymore. I don't have any moral objection to cloning the old synths either -- our laws have mechanisms to grant inventors exclusive use of their ideas for a limited time, but when that expires it's part of the commons. That's a good thing. I do think it's gross though to clone a popular recent synth just because you can and because the original designer didn't file the right paperwork to stop other people from doing that.

There's a continuous flamewar on /r/synthesizers between the people who think Behringer is a detestable parasite and the people who think they're making high-quality analog synthesizers available to the masses in a way that they never have before. I think both camps are right to a degree. I will defend Behringer's right to use the stuff that's clearly in the public domain, but I also think they have no class. They do things that damage their reputation even when it wouldn't have required much effort not to.

(I'm not an IP lawyer, so don't take this as expert commentary.)

> I think both camps are right to a degree. I will defend Behringer's right to use the stuff that's clearly in the public domain, but I also think they have no class.

Right -- same as 7Artisans / TTArtisan lenses. Genuinely impressive, affordable products, combined with a notable and surprising lack of self-respect where external design is concerned. At some level a lens barrel is a lens barrel, and the "big" brands are converging in their design language anyway as is normal, but the sooner these cheaper brands develop a consistent design language, the better.

They changed the step buttons on the RD-8 though as Roland has trademarked this particular color scheme. (It is not written 'colorway', we are not in sneaker territory)

https://cdm.link/2019/02/roland-303-808-trademarks/

the advantage of keeping the UI the same is that you don't have to relearn a new interface.

Since Behringer usually keep clones as close to the original as possible, I think this was a strategy to avoid legal issues when cloning something recent. These ones are functionally equivalent, but presented quite differently.

What are the Edge & Crave copies of, also Moog gear? I thought those were original Behringer products, with pretty decent sounding demos.

Crave, Edge, and now the just-announced Spice are more or less one-to-one replications of the signal paths and controls of the Mother-32, DFAM, and Subharmonicon respectively.

I’m glad Behringer made them look completely different from the originals, though I’m still not quite sure how I feel about them cloning synths that have been on the market less than a decade (as opposed to their typical cloning of 30+ year-old synths). The compact format and addition of MIDI are meaningful changes, at least, and there is something to be said for making the entire trio accessible for about the price of one of the Moogs.