A few observations:

1. Copyright is supposed to help an author receive just compensation
for his/her/its work.

2. Although much work obviously went into the manuals for
non-supported equipment, Agilent is no longer receiving significant
compensation for them - as far as I know.

3. So Agilent is correct as far as the letter of the law, but may not
really be correct as far as the intention of the law. But the letter
is the ruling rule.

4. Tektronix has publically released all copyrights on all their
manuals for equipment which they no longer support. (ONLY the
equipment they no longer support.) This has been a great boon for
hobbists, students, and probably some academic institutions. Maybe
even some of the many small start-up companies that find 25-30 year old
Tek scopes still are useful.

5. Both Agilent and Tektronix are completely within their legal
rights. But Tektronix has opted to be generous to the user community
of their older machines. This is a community of hobbyists, students,
academic institutions, and so on. The same community that Apple found
it cost effective to donate large numbers of computers to.

Release of copyright may cost Tek a few sales of newer machines, but
gains them a lot of respect. The value of the public relations almost
certainly is many times the small loss of potential sales.

I'm sorry to read that Agilent is not so forward thinking. Sounds like
they took their cue from Disney suing day-care centers for using
"Donald Duck" (r) (c) (tm) (etc.) in wall murals.

Ahh, well, the modern corporate mind.

-Howard