In the year 2024, a branch of PANArt research has brought forth a new form and thus also a new way of play­ing: Pangolo.

To the Instrument

It is with great joy that we note the recent rejec­tion by the Swiss Fed­er­al Supreme Court of the appeal against the judg­ment of the Bernese High Court of Autumn 2024.

The Supreme Court of the Can­ton of Berne (Switzer­land), on July 2, 2024 hand­ed down the long await­ed deci­sion in the pro­ceed­ings ini­ti­at­ed by 25 man­u­fac­tur­ers and deal­ers of hand­pans (“Claimants”) in Octo­ber 2020. The Court, in its thor­ough deci­sion of 95 pages, held that the HANG, in all its ver­sions, and as shown in the sketch below, is pro­tect­ed by copy­right under Swiss law, under Ger­man law and under Dutch law.

Appli­ca­tion for can­cel­la­tion of the HANG brand: PANArt will thwart this attack.

The Com­mer­cial Court of the Can­ton of Bern had sched­uled the main hear­ing for two days, and it indeed last­ed that long – unusu­al­ly long for a court hear­ing in Switzer­land. The court­room was filled to capacity.

Balu is the com­pre­hen­sive term for a sound body con­sist­ing of the instru­ments Balu Sei, Balu Sai, Balu Sui and Godo. The video shows the PANArt tuners play­ing the instruments. 

Last May the plain­tiffs hand­ed their reply to the court. We now have respond­ed to this reply. This clos­es the writ­ten pro­ce­dure, and the com­mer­cial court of the Can­ton of Bern (Switzer­land) is expect­ed to sum­mon the par­ties to the main hear­ing in the begin­ning of 2023. Thus, we hope for a final deci­sion regard­ing the copy­right pro­tec­tion of the HANG in 2023.

A Case Study on Man­ag­ing Cre­ativ­i­ty, Sep­tem­ber 2012

Author: Rupert Cocke
© Copy­right by the Author – All rights reserved
Pub­lished on www​.hang​blog​.org: Novem­ber 7^th, 2012Original lan­guage: English

„The Mir­ror Effect“
A Dis­ser­ta­tion writ­ten by Christo­pher Baron (M.A. Music Ther­a­py)
Uni­ver­si­ty West of Eng­land, Bris­tol 07/10/2020

In this dis­ser­ta­tion Christo­pher Baron, a formed music ther­a­pist, goes deep into the effects that music pro­duced with the PANArt Hang®-Family Instru­ments on musicians.

What is the issue?
An attempt­ed expla­na­tion.

By Felix Rohn­er, PANArt

The Hang®, cre­at­ed by Sabi­na Schär­er and Felix Rohn­er in 2000, and pro­duced and dis­trib­uted by PANArt Hang­bau AG, Bern, Switzer­land, is pro­tect­ed by copyright.

Why this is so, and what it means, we want to answer by means of ques­tions that are fre­quent­ly asked by sup­pli­ers of hand pans and oth­er peo­ple inter­est­ed in the topic.

A design must be reg­is­tered before a pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion of an object. PANArt did not do this with the famous Hang sound sculp­ture. In cer­tain coun­tries, how­ev­er, copy­right pro­tec­tion applies, for exam­ple in Switzerland.

About the rights and the phi­los­o­phy of PANArt

This arti­cle is intend­ed to con­tribute to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of PANArt’s posi­tion and to clear up misunderstandings.

In our new sec­tion Instru­ments we pro­vide an overview of the var­i­ous Pang instru­ments cur­rent­ly built by PANArt. In this con­text we also present you with our newest instru­ment, the Hang® Gede. 

First expe­ri­ences with the Hang® Bal in a larg­er group of play­ers con­firmed our expec­ta­tions towards our new sound sculp­ture. For whom is the Hang® Bal suitable? 

The art of the met­al sound sculp­tor resides above all in his abil­i­ty to con­struct his sound sculp­ture as an inter­com­mu­ni­cat­ing sys­tem of ener­gy stores. The com­plex­i­ty of these instru­ments also has con­se­quences for their players. 

The call of iron has tak­en us, here at PANArt, a big step fur­ther. Pang, the sheet that serves as PANArt’s raw mate­r­i­al, has over recent months giv­en birth to nov­el res­o­nance bod­ies. These have come togeth­er to form the Pang ensem­ble. The cre­ative path has led us away from the sound sculp­ture Hang, and towards Pang’s oth­er poten­tial­i­ties: instru­ments whose bod­ies can also bring forth a dri­ving, pul­sat­ing bass. 

With ​‘Secrets of the Steel­pan – Unlock­ing the Secrets of the Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, Tun­ing and Oper­a­tion of the Steel­pan’ Dr. Antho­ny Achong is pre­sent­ing his life’s work, a sum­ma­ry of his exten­sive stud­ies on the steel­pan. Here you can read a review by PANArt tuner Felix Rohner.

If you would like to get to know the musi­cal instru­ment Gubal®, we sug­gest you read this arti­cle. Here you can find out what this instru­ment is about.