Ruling in EU General Court finds the Flying V body shape has “no demonstration of distinctive character”. (see our earlier report)
Guitar.com
Gibson may currently be taking legal action to protect its Flying V body shape in the US, but the company has lost the rights to trademark the 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.”
The case dates back all the way to 16 June 2010, when Gibson filed a patent application for the Flying V with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), which was initially granted. However in October 2014 Hans-Peter Wilfer, the owner of Warwick and Framus, challenged the registration of the mark in respect to musical instruments.
In 2016, this case was heard by the EUIPO’s Cancellation Division, and Wilfer’s complaint was upheld, declaring the mark invalid in regards to musical instruments, and declaring that, “the applicant had failed to establish the distinctive character acquired by that mark in the European Union.”
Gibson appealed and lost in 2018, and then took its appeal to the EU General Court, where a panel of three judges dismissed Gibson’s second appeal, and ordered them to pay costs.
In the judgement, the court declared that while the shape of the Flying V guitar “was very original when it was released on the market in 1958, it cannot however deny the evolution of the market during the following 50 years, which was henceforward characterised by a wide variety of available shapes.”
Source: https://guitar.com/news/gibson-loses-flying-v-trademark-case-in-eu-court/
