guitars @lemmy.world TheReturnOfPEB @reddthat.com 3d ago

Gibson hits Trump Guitars with cease and desist for resemblance to Les Paul body design

consequence.net Gibson hits Trump Guitars with cease and desist for resemblance to Les Paul body design

Gibson has hit Trump Guitars and 16 Creative with a cease and desist due to the new guitar line's resemblance to Gibson's Les Paul design.

41 comments

Just like his dropshipped sneakers and watches the trump guitars website has the disclaimer "The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product", so they'll probably be ok to just send different looking junk from Ali other than the Gibson-looking junk.
- Temu drop shipped
Fuck, he even infests guitars
- And here I thought my one little corner of the internet was safe from bullshit, and Hitler has to go make a guitar. Go figure
As much as I dislike Orange Man, and would like to praise Gibson here, this probably doesn't have much, if anything, to do with politics.. Gibson has spent the last decade suing fucking everybody over IP infringement. They're particularly fond of going after small independent luthiers who don't have the means to fight a giant corporation in court.

It's part of Gibson's multi-decade plan to cary out any wacky dumbass scheme they can think of to boost profits, just so long as it doesn't involve them making high quality instruments again.
- They're particularly fond of going after small independent luthiers who don't have the means to fight a giant corporation in court.
  
  You have to vigorously defend trademarks or you lose them.
  
  https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/fender-loses-guitar-copyright-case-201886
- I don't know what Gibson is so upset about, those guitars are representative of what Gibson is all about. Overpriced garbage that's likely to break.
die already
- Every time somebody wishes death to that bastard Satan adds another day to his life.
  
  Damn, this guy's going to live a thousand years.
  
  So if we wish him well, will Satan take away days?
Do any trumpers actually know how to play a guitar, or is this just another cheap Chinese prop?
- Unfortunately, yes, just like any other niche. I have distanced myself from a few musician friends because they absolutely cannot resist injecting incredibly toxic politics into every aspect of their lives. Vote for whoever you want, but every conversation is not an invitation to blather on about the talking points of the week.
  
  Vote for whoever you want
  
  Don't vote for literal fascists, though
Someone is making Trump guitars now
- Opportunistic businessmen capitalizing on the stupidity of his supporters. It's almost commendable as a business venture.
  
  At this rate we're going to have an entire old school catalog of Trump shit by the end of the first year. Fucking press conferences to hock his grifty shit.
  
  Trump vodka is back
  
  Get the exclusive Trump Cyber truck by Tesla.
  
  Wipe like a President with Trump toilet paper.
"Can't stop the king." -Potato Supreme
I'm not trying to defend Trump in any way, but seeing the crap he's trying to sell to dumb people, the last thing I think is "that sure looks like a prestige Les Paul"
- I've heard it's not Trump himself selling them just one of his dickriders with his backing.
  
  I normally don't side with Gibson over their stupid copyright claims for pretty generic shapes. But if they can knock some Trumpster down a peg I'll back them this time.
  
  I've heard it's not Trump himself selling them just one of his dickriders with his backing.
  
  That's Trump's entire business model.
  
  He didn't write the Trump Bible himself.
  
  I don't think anything about a guitar besides maybe artwork printed on the face should be copyrightable.
  
  Features of a guitar may be patentable. New and novel features might qualify for a utility patent, aka "Method and apparatus for pitch bending guitar strings via an articulated bridge." These would have to have functional ramifications to the guitar or represent a new way of making them. The spring-loaded bridge with tremolo handle would qualify for utility patent, I think Ovation's plastic round backs and maybe their clusters of small tone holes would also. Utility patents last for 20 years and all that I've mentioned would have expired by now.
  
  There are also design patents, which is, for the most part, what I think the distinctive shape of a guitar body would fall under. Design patent covers the aesthetic shape of a functional object. The Stratocaster, the Les Paul, the Flying V, the distinctive body shapes of these guitars would qualify for design patent. Design patents last 15 years in the US so all of these designs would have long since expired into the public domain.
  
  Then we get into trademark, which is different from copyrights and patents. Trademarks guarantee the source of goods, and are thus valid as long as you're in business. The names Les Paul, Stratocaster, Breadwinner, etc. Those names can be trademarked. In the guitar world, I would also allow trademarking the shape of headstocks, because while there are practical constraints head stock embellishments are largely non-functional and decorative. The headstock shape of a guitar is notionally similar to the hood ornament or radiator grille of a car. I give Fender right-of-way on their distinctive wedge with circle on the end shape and Ovation their Londo Mollari frill.
  
  If we allow luthiers to trademark the overall shape of a guitar, we're stifling innovation. The entire reason patents expire is so that - after the inventor got his cut - anyone else can go "I can make it better and/or cheaper." Allowing the entire design to be trademarked in perpetuity is subverting the spirit of the law. It allows mostly businessmen who don't actually create anything to gather up and hoard intellectual property like a dragon hoards treasure, profiting from something they had no hand in creating like an intellectual tape worm. The inventions of 60 years ago must now be the heritage of all mankind else we risk allowing the rot of private equity to spread.
  
  "I don't side with obvious frivolous copyright claims against people unless it's against somebody I don't like"
  
  You can do better
- I think the case has a pretty solid backing though. Gibson has made a more or less identical guitar for 100 years, same with Les Paul, Statocasters, and pretty much all guitar manufacturers. You could argue it's predatory from the largest guitar manufacturer, but they will probably win.
Oh look, it's two horrible people fighting eachother. Nobody wins, but it's still good entertainment.
Do they have a legal leg to stand on? Plenty of brands sell guitars similar or identical to Les Pauls, Strats, SGs...
- There is some precedence with design similarities.
  
  Gibson went after Ibanez in the late 70's for the headstock.
So Gibson is the Nintendo of instruments?

That have sense with the fact what all Japanese have a hyperfixation with Les Pauls.
- Related anecdote, my sister's fiance (at the time) gave me a guitar he supposedly found by a dumpster or in a storage unit. It looked like a Les Paul, but wasn't, I forget the name on the top. I sent it to have it looked over and a couple little things repaired.
  
  The repair guy ended up calling me and making sure I was good with XYZ, and I asked if he could tell me anything about it. Apparently, I had a Japanese counterfeit Les Paul. I guess back in the 70s/80s/90s, Japanese companies would make clones of Les Paul's and sell them for a reduced price, but their quality was kinda comparable to the real deal.
  
  Les Paul would sue and/or send a cease and desist, and the company would shut down and pop up a few months later under a different name, rinse and repeat.
  
  I ended up selling the guitar back in high school, kinda wish I hadn't, but actually ended up buying another a few years later, different color but a Japanese Les Paul.
  
  I really want to know why jp have a fixation with lespauls. The 90% of animes that had a character playing music use one.

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