DO REGISTER YOUR DESIGNS! Checkout these websites for copyright protection of your designs:

Patents are expensive, registering your designs isn't. And they will protect against blatant copies of your design work like this one from Behringer FOUR PLAY. They only added a few words and changed colors. But it is clear to anyone that it is a copyright infringement if only the design of the Intellijel Quad VCA is registered.


My advice to all companies in the modular synthesis world: DO REGISTER YOUR FRONT PANEL DESIGN! This falls under copyright protection and it makes it very difficult for other companies to almost completely copy that. The FOUR PLAY module from Behringer looks a lot like the Quad VCA from Intellijel, and I'm certain that this will result in a copyright infringement if the design is registered!
Software and Hardware are almost impossible to secure in this way, but at least you can secure your look and feel!