What happened to the LP kits. Are they coming back?
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What happened to the LP kits. Are they coming back?
Removed due to threat of legal action from everyone's favorite litigious guitar brand.
You are welcome to grab one of the many LP kits available on EBay etc and put a diary up in the non-pitbull section. You'll still get help from the forum that way.
The only company more litigious than Gibson would be Rickenbacker.
Ok. I see they haven’t stopped other kit company’s yet
I have heart they are being $&@# holes lately
Yeah I'm sure a lot of those ones on Ebay have been served cease and desist, but a lot of them produced in a certain country that doesn't care much about intellectual property and trademarks. It's almost impossible to prosecute them.
Pitbull however operate in a country that has pretty strong intellectual property laws and while they could certainly put forward a strong legal argument, its the cost to what is effectively a pretty small operation doesn't make it worth while.
It's pretty telling that in over 50 years of throwing their weight around G has only had 1 successful lawsuit, which was settled out of court and applied only to the open book design of the headstock. But they have the money and the lawyers to at the very least be a giant pain in the butt of the little guys. It's a disappointing attitude, if they were producing consistent guitars at a decent price point they would have little to fear from smaller/kit manufacturers. And if they were really smart, they'd licence a couple of kit producers to allow people to do hobby builds, at least they'd get a slice of the pie that way.
I know I am grossly simplifying here, but notice that the big F company doesn't tend towards suing every other builder that makes T or S-style guitars, but it was the big G that teetered on the edge of bankruptcy a couple of years back.
I think somebody mentioned that Fender didn't take out a patent.
cheers, Mark.
I think it's also been ruled that you can't patent a guitar shape as it's part of the functional ergonomics of the instrument. And no-one owns the instrument itself. Can't remember where I read that, but may have been when researching the 'Lawsuit' era.
Interesting read, thanks SonicQuote:
Originally Posted by Sonic Mountain
Also interesting to note that the headstock design is generally able to be trademarked and a part of why almost all PBG current line up feature the paddle style.
There is also ongoing effort for their Pre Build range (not currently stocked afaik) to have it's own unique headstock design, but I'm not actually sure what's happening with that. I saw some pictures of some sample necks at the end of last year, but I guess the whole pandemic thing has put a bit of a kybosh on that endeavor.
I'm curious as to how StewMac get away with it?
StewMac's LP kits have a non-G headstock shape, and the body has some differences, i.e. the lower horn is somewhat diminished. Presumably those differences are precisely for the purpose of avoiding being sued.