I know this discussion is getting a little off topic, but I do think that talking about patents, copyright and trademarks is actually quite relevant in the context of the LMDrum.
I emailed Roger asking him about the copyright to the sounds and he responded with the below. I did ask if I could quote his response in this forum and he agreed too.
"Yes, I still own the sounds but may never do anything about it for the reasons given in the essay.
Bruce Forat doesn’t own the sounds and made an honest mistake in claiming that he did. He never owned the intellectual property rights to the sounds, but rather bought a master copy of the sound chips from the auction of my former company’s assets, mistakenly thinking that this gave him ownership of the intellectual property. And I’ve turned a blind to his claims because I appreciate his having provided repair to my old customers, and because I don’t really care so much."
So that clears it up more anyway. I find this stuff fascinating tbh.