Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: jacko on March 15, 2017, 04:39:21 AM
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just been made aware of this Judgement giving Gibson exclusive rights to their explorer bodyshape..
http://www.mi-pro.co.uk/news/read/gibson-confirms-exclusive-rights-to-trademarked-guitar-designs-in-legal-dispute-with-jhs/022100
IMO it's not lightyears away from the Exploiter bodyshape :-\
Graeme
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I did a little more digging into this story. It appears that Gibson and JHS reached a settlement. In that situation, the settlement applies to JHS only. If order for Gibson to prevail in a lawsuit against Alembic, (perish the thought!), Gibson would have to prove that consumers were confused about the true manufacturer. Personally, I think Gibson would have a very difficult time proving people were buying Alembic Exploiters thinking they were Gibsons.
Bill, tgo (who took copyright law in law school from the Beatles lawyer - great stories!)
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And if Henry wanted to go that route, I think there are other companies with a higher output & closer, um - "inspiration" shall we say? - from the Explorer he'd go after first
Peter
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Pretty funny considering Gibson/Epiphone have certainly made strat shaped guitars themselves.
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This is similar to the Gibson / PRS legal issues re: Les Paul vs. Singlecut body shapes that surfaced a few years ago.
As customer who owned both, I was contacted via phone for an interview by PRS and was asked the specific question: "When you made your purchase, were you at all confused by the similarity of the body shapes?".
To which I responded: "Absolutely not. I purchased each instrument because of its specific capabilities. To me, they both look, sound and feel completely different from each other".
For additional proof, try to fit a Singlecut into an LP case (and vice-versa).
At the time, I thought it was a nuisance lawsuit and was disappointed to learn that PRS could not sell or promote the Singlecut model while it was going on, but Gibson was not similarly restricted re: the LP.
So I agree - I do not think a knowledgable customer would be confused by any perceived visual similarity between the Exploiter and Explorer.
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Maybe my old Washburn A15 will go up in value now?
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Some other styles that are similar:
http://www.edroman.com/featured/explorersnothers.htm
Note; I am not promoting this persons site in any way. These images are just for your own entertainment !!
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Why does the "copy of the John Entwistle Explorer by Ed Roman" have an Alembic logo on the V headstock? Are they insinuating that Alembic copied Ed Roman's design???
(http://club.alembic.com/webkit-fake-url://16d11454-2862-4e5f-8a2a-cc0935b6158d/imagejpeg)
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Why does the "copy of the John Entwistle Explorer by Ed Roman" have an Alembic logo on the V headstock? Are they insinuating that Alembic copied Ed Roman's design???
(http://club.alembic.com/webkit-fake-url://16d11454-2862-4e5f-8a2a-cc0935b6158d/imagejpeg)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh sorry, but that was good one.
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I think this was actually back when Ed Roman was a dealer and maybe this bass was for sale there.
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And we all know Ed never would have taken credit for another's work.
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or, at least, not anymore!
hehehehe
bill, tgo