I posted this in the other thread, but I'll post here too, because it seems relevant:

OK, Sweetwater asked nicely for their patches to be taken down from here, and someone did just that. But hopefully they were taken down as a courtesy, not out of fear of legal action. Sweetwater would like you to think they have some clout on this, but they really don't.

These patches aren't paintings or songs or books; they're just knob positions - and more than that, they're knob positions on "virtual" knobs, in the digital realm. There is nothing proprietary about them - no secret sauce involved. And because of that, they can't be protected under intellectual property laws - if they could be, every one of us that came close to duplicating one could be sued out of existence. One can only imagine the legal free-for-all that would ensue if a given "sound" or "preset" could be considered "intellectual property".

No, the presets are simply a marketing edge, and I understand Sweetwater wanting to protect that edge over the competition, but nobody's going to be sued for sharing them, nor can they be.