ANNOUNCEMENT: Gibson styled products

Wyliee said:
New, similar but non infringing, bodies will be available in the coming months.
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How long is the term "coming months" supposed to be?  :icon_scratch:





Yeah - I'm impatient.  :icon_biggrin:
 
All months that are not past or current are coming. Keeps forecasts accurate.

It's kinda like weather forecasting. "Partly sunny" or "partly cloudy" means if the sun shines at all or there's a single cloud in the sky, you had an accurate forecast. "Chance of rain" means whether it rains or not, you were right. Wanna improve your throwing or shooting accuracy? Throw or shoot something - anything - and after it impacts, you just say "Ha! Hit it!"
 
I guess now we know that the Gibson styles didn't make up a significant part if the revenue. You can bet if they couldn't make Strat bodies any more they'd have a replacement style up in a week.
 
All Warmoth needs is legal cover.  They need a licensing deal with a huge foreign manufacture, like Cort.  If an American guitar company had a problem with the items the Warmoth was producing, Warmoth could simply comply with their demands and then Cort could sue that American guitar company in a Korean court for their loss of revenue.  I doubt this would even go to trial as the American guitar company would want to settle.
 
Sounds like a good way for a lotta lawyers to make a lotta money without anything getting done or any benefit to the consumer.
 
Sounds to me like there isn't any legal basis or practical need for going into a licensing agreement like that. Chances are the profits that Warmoth makes from selling Gibson-styled products wouldn't be anywhere near the amount of money required to ink a cross-border contract like that. Plus why wouldn't those manufacturers just make the parts themselves? Cort probably has a manufacturing plant much bigger than Warmoth and can produce in larger volumes.

If it were me, I'd do the exact same thing and just sell off the existing stock and remove the offending product. No point wasting time and money on something that doesn't bring in the profits. Simple cost-benefit analysis  :icon_scratch:
 
That's a point.

Just out-maneuver the competition with greater innovation and higher quality, and the market will take care of itself.

Maybe Gibson will finally learn a lesson and do the same thing. Then, everybody benefits. But, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen, lest I suffocate. They've already demonstrated an inability for meaningful innovation and have shifted to litigation instead. Reversible with the proper management, but not a good sign as things stand.
 
To address Mero's point, the foreign partner would be getting free money.  There is nothing for them to do, no costs or overhead at all.  The added bonus for the foreign partner is that they may have opportunity to litigate a big fat America corporation on their turf.  The current trend of litigation as way of improving a company’s bottom line is not going away.

In other fields, innovation would be a way for a company to compete effectively, unfortunately there has been no significant innovation in the world of electric guitars since the ‘60s.  There have been improvements in electronics and CAM has come along, but none of these fields has provided anything but minor evolutionary improvements.
For example if you bought a new digital modeling amplifier what percentage of the amp models are for amplifiers created in the ‘70s or beyond.  In the world of guitars, what percentage of the guitars sold today are really just recycled versions of guitars from the ‘50s and ‘60s?

What I find attractive about Warmoth is that it gives one the opportunity to create something that has a different wrinkle in a familiar theme.  The sad part about this situation is that there are now fewer options than before.  Just look at the Guitar of the Month for April…
 
Cagey said:
That's a point.

Just out-maneuver the competition with greater innovation and higher quality, and the market will take care of itself.

Maybe Gibson will finally learn a lesson and do the same thing. Then, everybody benefits. But, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen, lest I suffocate. They've already demonstrated an inability for meaningful innovation and have shifted to litigation instead. Reversible with the proper management, but not a good sign as things stand.
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Actually, I bought a 2012 Gibson LP Standard recently and was quite pleasantly surprised at the modern features it had. PCB in the electronics cavity with push-pull pots all around for coil-splitting (well not really true coilsplitting but a pseudo "fat-tap"), out of phase and blower switch. Granted there's no way I'd ever be able to manage all those controls live, but it's nice to have when playing at home.

I gotta say, it seems to be like they do kinda want to push new features, but the buyers don't want that. Most Gibson fans just want reissues of the vintage models down to the tone of plastic hardware and whatnot.

Although admittedly, I have to say their QC really is quite hit-and-miss.

To Davy: Actually, I realise that there's nothing that can actually be licensed to a foreign partner. Don't think Warmoth owns any intellectual property in the Gibson-style bodies. Plus no one's gonna litigate when there's nothing dear to them. The costs of cross-border litigation are tremendous, probably much more than a supply contract with Warmoth is worth. Plus if you're considering the big Asian manufacturers like Cortek, consider that they have a much larger incentive to be on Gibson's good books should a lucrative OEM deal ever be in the works, whether for a lower brand like Epiphone or for the manufacturing of hardware. Basically what I'm saying is, sure it sucks that Warmoth can't sell the Gibson-style parts anymore (at least till they're redesigned), but no white knight is gonna swoop in and protect the damsel in distress where there's nothing to gain. After all, a business's a business.

On a side note, admittedly Gibson probably doesn't have a case legally, I don't actually think the shape of the Gibson bodies are trademarked. I could be wrong though. But from a purely legal perspective I can see how a legal strategy like that makes sense. Basically a super-aggressive approach towards protecting their intellectual property assets. Not uncommon tbh, Bethesda Softworks has done it with the Elder Scrollls trademark and the whole Monster trademark litigation is infamous. Not that I agree with it, but it isn't exactly uncommon practice with regard to intellectual property.

EDIT: Oh but I forget, Gibson might (and probably does) have existing trademarks on the headstock shapes, so they would have a case there.
 
Some years ago, I was involved in a copyright infringement lawsuit as an expert witness. The first deposition was kind of a bust and for that reason, I think when I was called for the second one, the deposition was cancelled. So, instead I ended up spending the day talking with one of owners of a prominent Dallas law firm. Interestingly, what we talked about most was guitars and music. He had just had his 40th birthday party where the Stratoblasters had played. Which I was familiar with because I had taken lessons from one of the members.

When we did discuss business, one of the things I learned was that if you owned a copyright or trademark, you were pretty much required to defend that ownership whenever you became aware of it being infringed upon or your legal right would be somewhat diminished. I'm not sure that Gibson has done this consistently, but they've certainly Defended their ownership to some degree and may feel compelled to continue doing so.
 
Johnny said:
When we did discuss business, one of the things I learned was that if you owned a copyright or trademark, you were pretty much required to defend that ownership whenever you became aware of it being infringed upon or your legal right would be somewhat diminished.
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That's true of trademark, but not of copyright or patent. You can copyright or patent something and then sit back doing nothing but watch somebody else infringe for years until they get filthy rich off the idea, then sue the snot out of them and take everything they earned on the idea plus some. Happens a lot. Ask Vonage or Blackberry, for some megabucks examples. Those poor bastards have lost more than a billion dollars between them because of that exact thing, and they're not alone by a long shot. Just about any manufacturer these days can tell you stories that would make your sphincter tighten.

Trademark is more an identity thing, designed to protect consumers from fraud more than anything else. For example, you don't want cheap, toilet paper-thin paper towels to be marked as "Bounty" towels, because it would be quite the disappointment when you got the useless things home and tried to use them. Fortunately, Procter and Gamble would lose money if that happened, so they defend that identity. If they stopped doing so, consumers would almost certainly be defrauded by ne'er-do-wells and the "Bounty" mark would lose all value.
 
if gibson would have a trademark on their LP shape, why didn't PRS lose the appeal? In stead, Gibson lost, and lost big time.

but I'm thankful I live in the Netherlands. Gibson has nothing here and I can copy the LP shape as MUCH as I want.
 
Yeah I think it's mainly just a scare tactic on Gibsons behalf.  They see how pristine the Warmoth construction is, and know that it would just be a matter of time before the W took over.  After all, can you really copyright a shape? If so, all you would have to do is make a MINOR change in the design, whether it be visible to the eye or not.
 
You can certainly trademark the shape - viz. the Strat and Tele headstocks. Making a change not visible to the eye wouldn't work, as evidenced by the PRS case. The question it came down to was specifically whether they looked similar enough that someone might think the PRS was a Gibson.

The PRS shape was deemed sufficiently different by a court that one would not be mistaken for the other. In fact IIRC even Gibson admitted this. However, this would obviously not be the case with Warmoth - they called it an LP and it was quite obviously meant to be as similar as possible to a Gibson Les Paul. In photos from the front it would obviously be regularly mistaken for a Gibson by a lot of people.

As a thought experiment: let's say I design a new body shape tomorrow. It has some cool new contours, it's comfortable to play and some people are saying its the best thing to happen to the electric guitar for 50 years. I'm only just getting started so I don't have CNC - I cut each body by hand. But I've got a good waiting list building up and my business is starting to grow. I can quit my day job.

Then the waiting list suddenly starts shrinking. I'm getting cancellations every day. After a week or two of this I ask a customer why I'm getting so many cancellations. He says "oh didn't you know? Warmoth are doing the same body shape now for less cash and there's no waiting list!"

Is this OK, or am I allowed to be a bit pissed at Warmoth here? I created that shape, which immediately implies a copyright. Should I ask them to stop?

Or is it bad in this situation because I'm the smaller of the two businesses? It's OK for W to use (rip off) IP from a big company, but not a small one? Surely not.

I don't like big businesses much, but I do think that it should be one rule for all of us, not different rules depending on your relative size.
 
The PRS issue was also about control layout. If you look back during the lawsuit the controls were changed on the singlecuts.
 
pabloman said:
The PRS issue was also about control layout. If you look back during the lawsuit the controls were changed on the singlecuts.
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Subsequently, Gibson uses the PRS Single-cut layout on the Neal Schon model and Fender has used the Les Paul layout on it's Tele Deluxe and Tele Custom since '72.
 
Not sure if it was mentioned in the last 20 pages. How far away are the knockoff bodies? Will everything taken down be back in a different form or will there be less options? Is this an opportunity to get more body and headstock styles like a 335 double cut or a 339 or a t-bird/fire birdesk head? I'd love to see more bass head stocks if at all possible. Maybe even a ripper or Rd body.
 
SustainerPlayer said:
I think this thread and the Starcaster thread will eventually merge into one.  :-\
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streams.jpg

DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS!
 
It was never anything I wanted, just a point of interest.  When Warmoth was still doing the Gibson body and headstock shapes, they had an Explorer bass body but no Explorer bass headstock.  Conversely, they had a V bass headstock and no V bass body.  To show that no good deed goes unpunished, now they have none. :sad1:
 
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