A couple recent threads have brought up some interesting points of machine tool ownership and taxation. Serviceman just answered a request for information on adding memory to the Haas control saying it's a soldering job on older machines. This implies that the additional memory must be physically installed. I know this sounds simple minded but give me a minute.
Another thread got into the area of personal property taxation as it applies to machine tools. The concept of personal property comes from English Common Law which is the foundation of our (USA's) legal system. It recognizes real property, usually land and improvements thereon, and personal property like cars, machine tools, and most everything else. I think even intellectual property (software) falls under personal property but I'm not sure, after all, Queen Elizabeth didn't have a computer.
An important thing to keep in mind as you follow this tirade is the fact that both real and personal property share a very important attribute and that is assign-ability. You can assign an interest in your house to a bank (mortgage) or your lathe (chattel mortgage). The latter is more commonly known as a security interest governed by the Uniform Commercial Code.
Now to the crux of the issue along with my contentions. It seems logical to me that one's ownership of a chattel or piece of personal property (your car or lathe) includes the entire piece of property. It does not exclude any of the various parts. If you don't make your car payments and the car is repoed by the bank you cannot require the return of the trunk because that part of the car belongs to your wife.
To the best of my knowledge all late model Haas machines are shipped with the extended memory in place. I found this out when the local teck forgot to re-enter the serial number of my TM-1P after it's last mother board replacement. This caused all my options to be turned off after some number of hours because the machine assumes the payments have not been made. These options included rigid tapping ( it cost me 2 taps to find out it was turned off ) and intuitive programming which I never missed. The real kicker was it also turned off my extended memory.
I purchased the whole machine, I did not assign any part of it back to Haas. Had I financed the machine the bank would certainly expect to have a security interest in the machine as a whole, including the extended memory. I don't think Haas has any right or claim that would entitle them to control my extended memory.
Now, back to that intellectual property thing. Is someone breaking the law if they hire most any 13 year old to hack into their Haas operating system to gain access to the extended memory that is physically sitting in there? Can the previous owner of your car deny you use and or access to the trunk?
This should bring out all the curb stone lawyers.
Vern