When can you call it your own design?

[Miles Prower]

Or maybe that is only held true when you start with a blank piece of paper and start truly from scratch?

That's what I did: started from scratch, and came up with an "own design". I was reluctant to proclaim it so since there have been quite a few man-millenia devoted research and development, and, even though I didn't see anything like what I came up with "in the wild", I sure couldn't say it hadn't been done before. A few years later, I finally saw something very similar in a Hitachi application report. However, that design used MOSFET finals, whereas mine used BJTs. Still, sounded much better than a lot of commercial designs I've heard.

I'm looking to find out what others think, when do they think a design is 'theirs' versus a copy or modification of a design that they found inspiring.

Any and all thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Scott

That can be a very fine hair to split.