Exactly.

It also extends out to styles and song books on keyboards. Keyboard manufactures product styles based on very popular songs and pay no royalties. They then even arrange them into Song Books on the keyboards and give them a name extremely close to the song they are intended to sound like so there are no royalties to pay or any legal issues.

This even extends to actual product lines and the names the keyboards are called. They give them very generic names or model numbers because in the past there have been lawsuits over the names given to keyboards. Not just keyboards either, Apple for example have even sued supermarkets for using an Apple in their logo.

It's all about trademarks and using existing named products to help promote your own. So long as you stay away form that, then there's quite a lot you can do that's legally sound.

As I said above, every keyboard manufacture on the face of the planet samples other keyboards and real world instruments. None of them have to pay any royalties either because they don't use the names of the products they are sampling, or there's a generic name. Silver Flute, Golden Trumpet, 80's Synth, Take Me On, and so on...

A musical instrument, as in a keyboard is a physical object. The sound it produces is it's function and cannot be copyrighted. If it could then Ketron and everyone else would not be allowed to sample the instruments they did to create the sounds their products produce. This is also not something a keyboard manufacture can just change their mind on when it suites them either. They sample their sounds from other instruments to product their products, then they have no right to protect the sound their instrument produces, just as the manufacture they took their sounds from had no rights to protect their sound.

James.