Gibson Has Their Lawyers Out Again...

I can't fault Dimarzio for being savvy back then. What would impress me is if Gibson came out with a run of guitars and teamed up with Dimarzio. Have them equipped with double cream super distortions, etc.
 
FuzzyAce said:
I can't fault Dimarzio for being savvy back then. What would impress me is if Gibson came out with a run of guitars and teamed up with Dimarzio. Have them equipped with double cream super distortions, etc.
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There's nothing save about filing a trademark application on...crap that has been sold in the marketplace by others for nearly 25 years at the time of your filing.
 
HotRats said:
Quoting form the link in first post:

DiMarzio’s double cream trademark isn’t a wordmark. Instead, it covers the “double design” of a pickup (IE, an open humbucker), with both bobbins being “the colour yellow which resembles the distinctive shade of cream.” This trademark was granted in 1981 with its first use in commerce listed as 1974.
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Huh. That's crazy. And also invalid on its face (again, as evidenced by how many other makers have completely ignored it and made double whites/double cream/whatever-you-wanna-call-it pickups for sale in the US.)
 
Achilles said:
Oh, I get it. Maybe just buckle and pay Dimarzio a small licensing fee? They're the ones that made double cream desirable in the first place. They deserve some credit for it.
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Or since you probably have lawyers on retainer, just do it and keep it tied up in court for years if you get sued. I would think Gibson has much deeper pockets DiMarzio. Plus if they can show that other companies have been breaking it for years and DiMarzio hasn't done anything about it, it could be considered an abandoned trademark.
 
Jesus @2112 that thing is about PERFECT!

Would be great to have double cream available broader than Dimarzio. I've had a couple double creams on my goldtop tribute and it's a nice look. Especially when it matches the mounting rings perfectly.

That said I'm not sure how much ground Gibson has to stand here. Were Gibson selling uncovered double cream pickups before Dimarzio or just making double cream under covers? And did people use "PAF" before Dimarzio? That's a little different than the stickers on the originals spelled out.
 
Byrdman said:
Plus if they can show that other companies have been breaking it for years and DiMarzio hasn't done anything about it, it could be considered an abandoned trademark.
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This is true, but my guess is Dimarzio has been enforcing on some level because we've heard about the double cream patent for many years now.
 
Good. It’s about time someone put an end to the DiMarzio double cream trademark.

Does SD still do the custom order where the bobbins are double cream but it has a nickel cover?

I remember that was the workaround for a while to circumvent the trademark. Just take the cover off before you install
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
Huh. That's crazy. And also invalid on its face (again, as evidenced by how many other makers have completely ignored it and made double whites/double cream/whatever-you-wanna-call-it pickups for sale in the US.)
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I'm no expert but the double cream debate has a long history and there's already been a legal battle in court about that few years ago. I belive di marzio won that one.

Achilles said:
Oh, I get it. Maybe just buckle and pay Dimarzio a small licensing fee? They're the ones that made double cream desirable in the first place. They deserve some credit for it.
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Sorry but I'm not a fan of their offerings. I had a pair of double cream 36th anniversary pups years ago, mounted on a LP studio.

paisleywookiee said:
Hmmm. Double Classic White sure looks like cream!

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that's interesting. I've never seen Gibson selling double cream pickups in the last 30+ years.
I think that's somenthing new.

A declaration of war
 
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Steve Vai's like "what's the big f*cking deal?"

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For once Gibson does something that isn't considered a bad idea.

The governments around the world should just hire some people whose only job is to go through existing patents and trademarks to investigate "Is this bullshit? Is this patent troll nonsense?" and then make a bunch of patents void that make no sense. There has to be enough patents out there that don't need expert level domain knowlege to say "nah, that's stupid and should have never been granted."
 
laxu said:
There has to be enough patents out there that don't need expert level domain knowlege to say "nah, that's stupid and should have never been granted."
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Thing is the holder of the patent has to pay a fee to keep it registered. I forget the statutes on it but I remember a co-worker coming up with a novel idea once that he convinced our boss to pay to patent - I argued against it for the reason bolded above. For years we tried getting a customer to bite on the concept but the uselessness of it was too obvious. A number of years went by and the renewal came up and it was a no brainer to let it expire.
 
laxu said:
For once Gibson does something that isn't considered a bad idea.

The governments around the world should just hire some people whose only job is to go through existing patents and trademarks to investigate "Is this bullshit? Is this patent troll nonsense?" and then make a bunch of patents void that make no sense. There has to be enough patents out there that don't need expert level domain knowlege to say "nah, that's stupid and should have never been granted."
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But they do -- they are the first line folks examining the patent and trademark applications. They don't always get it right -- because there are an insane number of filings each year. 647k patent applications in the US in 2022, divided amongst the ~8,000 US patent examiners that's about 81 cases per examiner per year, giving an average of 25 hours per case (keeping in mind that each application involves at a minimum two bites at the apple within that 25 hour window). European patent office is even more overwhelmed on a case-per-examiner basis. Iraq has two patent examiners, and each one of them has to look at each and every application filed in Iraq.

There are even more trademark applications each year in US, and there are well under 1,000 trademark examiners last I heard.

The vast majority of patents and marks issued are never asserted, so it would be absurd to pay government employees to troll through all the issued cases and...re-examine every issued case that has already been examined once?

Instead, private parties can seek to have a particular case re-considered in one of several ways - either at the agency level (which is where Gibson is filing this case) or in court.
 
norminal said:
For fucks sake…

I’ve never seen an industry with more drama than this.

As stupid as the double cream trademark is, Gibson really needs to allocate a portion of their legal fund to giving their employees an incentive to make quality instruments.
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You clearly haven't followed the legal drama and the many many many many more zeros involved in pharma, cell phone, computer chip, medical device, etc. industries.
 
Achilles said:
Thing is the holder of the patent has to pay a fee to keep it registered. I forget the statutes on it but I remember a co-worker coming up with a novel idea once that he convinced our boss to pay to patent - I argued against it for the reason bolded above. For years we tried getting a customer to bite on the concept but the uselessness of it was too obvious. A number of years went by and the renewal came up and it was a no brainer to let it expire.
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Thousands of dollars, due every 4-ish years, with the fee getting higher at each stage:

USPTO Patent Renewal Fees - RenewalsDesk

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