BlueChip is simply patenting an original invention, to protect against unfair competition. I don't think it has anything to do with employing lawyers or sharp business practice. It's like Budweiser getting a patent on beer bottles made of glass.īut, business is business and lawyers need work too.I would push back against this, at least a little. However, for them to patent making picks out of a material they don't make (in shapes they also didn't create) seems a bit of a stretch to me. It's too bad that the people who invented the F-5 mandolin, the Mastertone banjo, and the Les Paul electric guitar, are in such straits today. Other iconic US companies like C F Martin and Fender seem to have figured out 21st century reality better. Like many of us, I shed no tears for Gibson - but it's a shame that a company so identified with the development of world-class American stringed instruments, is in the shape it's in now. Once you permit open and long-duration use of features you've developed, without legal challenge, you can't then decide ex post facto to apply for legal protection. I've seen import guitars with stone copies of Hummingbird inlaid pickguards and finish colors, for example. So now they worry over the shapes of headstocks and truss rod covers, when they've allowed open use of much more distinctive features: body shapes, inlay patterns, finish colors, etc. Where the hell were the Gibson legal eagles, when everyone in the world started building F-model mandolins? If they weren't smart enough to slap a patent or copyright on the scroll-and-points silhouette, which was absolutely a Gibson creation (in fact, an Orville Gibson creation, I believe), they aren't gonna make up for it by suing Collings for what appears to be a clearly identifiable different headstock profile.
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