Kiesel Guitars Vice President Slams Gibson Cease-And-Desist Letter Over Manufacture Of Ultra-V Guitar - "We're Not Gonna Back Down"
February 21, 2020, 4 years ago
Music Radar is reporting that Gibson's legal department is flexing its muscles once again, this time going after Kiesel Guitars. Company vice president Jeff Kiesel revealed that the company recently received a cease-and-desist letter from Gibson concerning Kiesel’s Ultra-V model, and what Gibson claims are apparent similarities to the Flying V.
Kiesel: "I named the Ultra V, so I think it was about ’86 when it came out. I was seven years old, so it’s a really special model to me. So, to have those bozos try to tell us we can’t make it any more when it looks literally nothing like it... I mean, come on guys, look at the pointed body, look at the bevel on it: does that look anything like their V?"
Kiesel later guested on The Guitarologist and discussed the situation, making it clear that he has no intention of backing down. Check out the interview below.
Kiesel: "It's pretty sad. They've gotta be going through some financial struggles for them to be wasting time on something like this. It's a chase that they will end up ultimately losing. They're waiting for companies to go 'Oh, mighty Gibson, we're sorry, we'll stop making it'. If you look at the facts, we've been making it (the Ultra-V) before their trademark was approved, so even if it was a direct copy there's nothing they could do. And it's not a direct copy; not even close. It's not a battle they're going to win and we're not gonna back down."
Back in June 2019, it was reported that Gibson had lost the rights to trademark the Flying V guitar body shape in a judgement handed down by the Second Chamber of the EU General Court, which declared that, “there has been no demonstration of distinctive character acquired,” by the Flying V body shape and, “that when the application for registration of the challenged mark was filed, the V-shape did not depart significantly from the norms and customs of the sector.”
Guitar.com reported that Gibson has now lost the trademark for the classic Firebird shape guitar.
The decision, which was made by the Cancellation Division of the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), was handed down on October 11th, 2019, and has strong parallels with the Flying V case.
Read the complete report here.
Gibson Brands Inc. emerged from bankruptcy protection on November 1st, 2018. In January 2019 they hit the annual NAMM trade fair in Anaheim, CA with daily events, artist performances, Q&A’s, and new product debuts. In June 2019, the company put Director Of Brand Experience, Mark Agnesi, in the spotlight with a controversial video in which he warns guitar builders over trademark infringement. It received major backlash from the music community and was taken down - presumably by Gibson - but as nothing on the internet is ever really gone, it has been re-uploaded in poorer quality. See below.
In the video, Agnesi warns other guitar brands, boutique or otherwise, against producing forgeries of Gibson design elements:
"To the manufacturers out there, we want you to know that you’ve been warned. People ask us a lot about forgeries and counterfeit guitars, often of lower craftsmanship coming in from overseas, but there’s some common misconceptions about what a forgery is and what trademark infringement is. Any copy of any one of those designs that we’ve named is in fact by definition a counterfeit Gibson guitar."
The video is also available via Reddit here.
And, the backlash:
