Gibson Sues Over Paper Jamz

Posted 25 Nov 2010 in Industry Insights
The hi tech business gossip website, Tech Dirt, has uncovered yet another lawsuit action taken by Gibson, this time against the Wowwee toy maker, which produces the Paper Jamz toy guitars, drums and amps that enable users to imitate musicians simply by touching the circuit-embedded ‘paper’ that make up the instruments’ surface and structure. (The new toys were featured in an MI Pro news story here.)
Not happy with taking Wowwee to court, which on the face of it seems a reasonable thing to do as it turns out that not only are the Paper Jamz ‘guitars’ largely based on Gibson shapes, the toy maker seems quite happy to admit it as it refers directly to Gibson in its marketing, but Gibson is including the retailers Walmart, Amazon, Big Lots, K-Mart, Target, Toys R Us, Walgreens, Brookstone, Best Buy, eBay, Toywiz and HSN in the suit.
As Tech Dirt puts it: ‘Gibson sues everybody’.
Gibson is apparently claiming that these giant US retailers have all ignored cease and desist letters ordering them to stop selling the toys.
Gibson is, of course, well within its rights here, although the ensuing case could prove very interesting, as Tech Dirt points out. Ebay always turns out to be a very willing defendant in such cases – and often wins.

Source: MIPro



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