Copyright question

[Soap]

Re: Copyright question

Wow guys...
Your reading way too much into my post.

Its okay, I see theres a valid point and rightly so.

An extreme anaology:

However, before its all over and believe me it will reach this point. Will be copywriting our own waste to ensure we have the rights to our own waste. There are major law suits in the medical field of ones blood, bone marroe, semon and etc being used for medical purposes without consent. Yes, because poeple do infringe. It should never ever get to that point to begin with. It can easily get into an area of extreme, complete "overkill".

Back to real life and the matter at hand.
Another example:

Tech. or engineer or salesman.
Notices the arch/curve on a Jackson dinky body is 45 degrees , identical to ESP strat body specs. Violation of copyrights which makes for a great law suit ESP wins and Jackson has to remove all the so called dinky models off the shelf and loses much dinero.

Although its just a hypthetical scenario, its getting freaking absurd and overly ridiculously insane. Just make the guitars, gears, pickups and etc and shut the heck up.
Its just a freaking guitar. Man's stupidiy never ceases to amaze me.

It would be completely different if the guitar manufacturing world wasn't so small then I might be able to see a valid point for argument. Guitar manufacturing isn't a big money making businesses like some may think. In many cases they suffer loss than gain, and we wanna become overly concerned about copyrights. Again, I'm fasinated at stupidity.

Know the the law/s, including copyrights of various businesses and operate within those boundaries. How hard does have to be? When you push the envolope of innovation and potential infringe on copyrights you should know better. Your definitely getting into that grey area where a lawsuit is definitely around the corner. Common sense gets lost along the way. Don't make it any harder than its suppose to be.

[RR05xx]

Re: Copyright question

[ QUOTE ]
Fender hasn't always been protective of its headstock. There were forgeries of Fenders that date back to the early 60's. When Forrest White (plant manager of Fender at the time) asked Leo why he wasn't doing anything to stop these guys, Leo said along the lines of 'Because these people make money from the guitars they sell and that money feeds their kids and pays their bills. Who am I to take that away?'. It was CBS that really enforced this stuff. The first thing they protected was the off set contour body patent which they alleged Gibson stole for their Firebird design (and won so Gibson had to change the shape). It wasn't until the boom in the late 70's and early 80's where almost every manufacturer was using a direct copy Fender headstock shape that they took action on those shapes. I really feel they noticed the numbers by the late 70's, started quietly renewing expired patents and regestering trademarks and after a few years when all the paper work came through, they cleaned house.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good points Jim, but the "boom" you are refering to happened like 30 years ago and I though we were talking present day [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Niccolai]

Re: Copyright question

Esp is pretty good about changing there shapes. by US standars, a 10% change in shape makes it a new design and they would probably pass the criteria by the skin of thier teeth. Keep in mind ESP has HUGE financial backings. Electronic Sound Productions (ESP) is owned by samsontech, wich also owns schecter, daisy, hartke, zoom, and a few other decent-sized companies.
To challange Fender, though, would be to throw your buisiness down the toilet, they are probably the most financially stable company in the industry.

I think Gibson suing PRS is rediculous, The single cut isn't some amazingly innovative shape, they took a basic dreadnaught shape and files down the bottom for fret access, as far as I'm concerned, modifications on that shape are fair game. If someone spins an innovative shape and clearly rips it off... like for example ESPs spin of the RRV than that's clearly theft as far as I'm concerned.

[pro-fusion]

Re: Copyright question

There's another aspect to the body vs. headstock issue: functionality.

While trademark law is based around what a consumer thinks when he sees a design, copyright law protects "artistic" design elements, but not purely functional ones. I believe that a judge ruled at one time that the guitar's body shape (at least that of a strat) is a functional element that can't be copyrighted. The top horn is elongated in order to provide better balance, the body has a waist and cutouts to provide comfort, etc.

Trademark law doesn't worry about this stuff, but then trademark law is a very 'slippery' thing that depends on people's perceptions of a product and whether the trademark holder has sat on its rights, and such. Ultimately, trademark is great for lawyers, since they can argue just about any case for anybody, where copyright has more hardened principles.

I can understand why Gibson/Fender want to protect the strat and LP design elements, but I do believe that they have come to be pretty generic after all this time. Obviously a federal judge in Tennessee disagrees with me about the Les Paul, but we'll see what happens on appeal in that one. I have a suspicion that the appeals court won't be so eager to throw an entire industry into litigation turmoil.

[Jim Shine]

Re: Copyright question

[quote

Good points Jim, but the "boom" you are refering to happened like 30 years ago and I though we were talking present day [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand this, but I was giving some history on the topic. I do feel it is relevant as it explains why the body shapes were not covered from the start. Leo really wasn't worried and CBS invested all they had to protect the headstocks, modern day owners are going a step further and attempting to secure the rest of the design rights. Had Leo done all this way back in the past, this would not be an issue today and many brands we know and love today likely would have never prospered. As they say, history repeats itself.

[mattsmusiccenter]

Re: Copyright question

It's fairly ironic that Leo Fender let people use his headstock design so they could make money and feed their families. Too bad CBS didn't share that opinion when Leo started G&L. Not only wouldn't they let him use the headstock design but they wouldn't even let him put his last name on the guitars!

[Grandturk]

Re: Copyright question

[ QUOTE ]
It's fairly ironic that Leo Fender let people use his headstock design so they could make money and feed their families. Too bad CBS didn't share that opinion when Leo started G&L. Not only wouldn't they let him use the headstock design but they wouldn't even let him put his last name on the guitars!

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, Leo did sign this right away when he sold the company.

[Jim Shine]

Re: Copyright question

An interesting tidbit about G&L was before there was even an issue with his full name on some guitars (some of you may remember the "Leo Fender" signature decal found on many ASAT and Legacy guitars before they were told to cease and desist by Fender Musical Instruments), Leo didn't want to produce a Strat or Telecaster style guitar. He was more than happy making new designs, mostly evolutions of the Jazzmaster and Mustang shapes on his new guitars. The problem was Leo wasn't running the business. Starting in 1954 Leo hired other guys to do that job. He just wanted to tinker. The powers that be told Leo the company was losing lots of money and they had to come out with a model in direct competition to Strats and Teles in order to survive. At the time vintahe Strats and Teles were growing in demand. Leo felt this whole vintage craze was a marketing gimmick launched by CBS to sell their reissues. So to appease the people running G&L, he created the ASAT (originally Broadcaster) and Legacy models. Those models poured the foundation for the entire company.

I can go on and on about Leo. He was truely a class act. The guy lived in a friggen trailer until the 1980's even though he was a multi-millionare. Money meant nothing to him and I truely believe if it were not for his second wife, the guy would have run G&L his way to the end even if he had to continue to pay out of pocket to keep it going on his terms.

[LarryL]

Re: Copyright question

If you ran a large corporation I don't think your employees (or shareholders) would appreciate letting others borrow your intellectual property just to be nice. There is a reason that certain businesses succeed and others fail. It's not always based on who has the best product.

[toejam]

Re: Copyright question

[ QUOTE ]

Why should companies be able to rip off Fender's designs? Why can't they create their own?

[/ QUOTE ]
Why couldn't Fender create their own headstock instead of stealing it from Bigsby?? [img]/images/graemlins/fart.gif[/img]