There's not really any heroes or sympathetic victims in this one. Devi Ever ended up being the dumpster fire to his flaming bag of shit in the long run. It all still happened and they're all still awful people doing awful things. It isn't changing my brand of beer or when my alarm clock goes off in the morning.
I don't really care if you buy his stuff ... people seem to see the value in it. I find visiting the originals of the ideas he recycles is the more rewarding experience.
Don't get me wrong, I think that what Josh did was bad. He could've handed that better, and avoided a lot of the problems. But legally, nothing could be done about it, it seems, because anybody can copy a circuit, and there's no legal protection for that. As long as you're not using somebody else's brands, or trying to pass you product as someone else's (and I think that was not the case here), there's no legal base to punish a copied circuit. It's more of a moral issue than anything. If Josh had been open about what he was doing, things could've been a bit different, but I guess that wouldn't have solved the problem, as what transpires to me from that thread is that Devi was really hurt that Josh was more successful selling her circuit than she was.
But that's the thing, the guy is good at marketing and selling his pedals. One thing I learned is that a big part of the success of a product is marketing, either you like it or not. There are people that are great with marketing, even if their product is nothing special. And I understand the frustration of seeing someone selling something you made, while you barely sell your original ones. But that's marketing, plain an simple. And also the ability to grow a business, that's also an important skill to have, if you want to sell a lot of your products.
In the end, Josh wasn't being honest with what he was doing (even though there was nothing ilegal, it was morally questionable), he handled matters horribly, but nothing came from that other than a lot of people pissed (with reason, in my opinion). The guy keeps selling a lot of pedals (because he's good at it), he retired a lot of the controversial clones from his line (I guess he can afford hiring someone to create more original circuits now), and Devi, well, that's another matter, so I won't go there.
It's sad that a well known brand like JHS had such a turbulent start, because, if we omit this incident (and things associated with it), I think the company has sparked a lot of interest in guitar pedals for a lot of people. Its influence is undeniable (re: Bad Monkey). That's the good side of marketing, that you can attract people to things that they barely care about. I guess a lot of people decided to start building pedals because of JHS' videos. A pity, really.
Well, I don't want to keep derailing this thread. Thanks for all the info, Cheers.