Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Does anyone know if these can be custom ordered as a Floor Shop Custom, meaning they're the same price as regular Duncans? That's how all the other colors are ordered.

The trademark just means that other companies can't put them into production and make them a regular item. It doesn't mean you can't custom order them....as far as I know.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Grandturk said:
I disagree. Dimarzio makes excellent pickups. Their classic pickups like the Super Distortion have probably been recorded and played live more than any other replacement pickup.

Now, if anything, Dimarzio's pickups are way out there on the cutting edge whereas Duncan makes more traditional style pickups. During the 90's, where there was a backlash against everything "shred," I think Dimarzio may have been labeled as the "shred" pickup. People were looking for more traditional sounds, and that when Duncan really picked up steam.

Anyway, both make great pickups - it just depends on what you're looking for.
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I was not talking about tone or quality. Dimarzio is on the cutting edge and they do make some excellent pickups with a wide range of choices. It's their principles in question here. Why else have these strange patents like the double cream if not to generate profit? That's a bit dirty wouldn't you say?
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

TSE said:
It's the pincipal of the matter. Duncan stays competitive by selling great sounding pickups and Dimarzio does it through big money endorsments, shady patents, and litigation.
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Uhhhh, you also forgot excellent pups.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Trademarks based on color have been shot down before. In this case it should be extra easy because since Gibson's original humbuckers had randomly color bobbins clearly there was prior art. The fact that Gibson cannot claim a trademark since they did not defend that trademark only means it is free fire for all, not that somebody else can now go and trademark it on their own.

The real problem with DiMarzio abusing the trademark and patent systems (you should go read some of their trivial junk that made it through the patent office) is not that it is impossible to shoot down that nonsense in theory.

The problem is, and DiMarzio deliberately exploits this, that industries with much more money involved than the music industry, have driven up the prices of good intellectual property lawyers to about $600/hour.

Clearly, a company like Seymour Duncan might look big compared to -whatever- WCR, but they won't go spend a million bucks to shoot down one of DiMarzio's abusive trademarks or patents.

The worst part is that all of this combined makes it hard for people who actually invented something cool to get a patent.

%%

Boycotting DiMarzio on part of the consumer is the best approach here. I don't ask anybody to skip DiMarzio products just because of some forum post. But you can use Google's patent search to look for DiMarzio's patents and read for yourselves. You can read this very thread for the issue of a color trademark. Then make up your mind.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

veryhungrycaterpilla said:
Uhhhh, you also forgot excellent pups.
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Hmmm, maybe I should of said"Duncan profits from the sales of his products and Dimarzio from shady business practices". I forgot about todays attention spans. I also said in a previous post that DMZ does have exellent products and I am talking about principle.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

DiMarzio got their trademark because they asserted "acquired distinctiveness" based on what they claimed was exclusive use of exposed double cream humbucker bobbins for five continuous years.

Interestingly, DiMarzio’s lawyer also represents WD Music Products. He used the same "five years" argument to get WD a trademark on the lipstick tube pickup. Never mind that during the so-called five years (1995-1999) not only was Seymour Duncan making and selling lipstick tube pickups, but so were Charvel, Jerry Jones, Ibanez, Chandler and a little company called Danelectro who was bringing in boatloads of guitars with lipstick tube pickups.

Anyone see a pattern here?
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

DrNewcenstein said:
I don't get how they can patent mismatched electromagnetic coils.
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They didn't. Their patent is limited to a humbucker with different gauges of wire (say 42 on one, 43 on the other) on each coil and with, as the patent language says, "substantially the same number of turns" of wire on both coils.

Thus if you want to make a 43/42 humbucker with about a 1,000 turn difference, you should be home free, although you never know how a jury would interpret "substantially the same". Is that +/-5 turns, +/-500 turns, +/-1,000 turns? The purpose of the design is to create the same level of noise-free-ness while retaining the single-coil-clarity effect of mismatched coils, which strongly suggests that the turn difference tolerance has to be pretty tight or what's the point of DiMarzio even trying to make such a pickup?

Thus it would seem to me that a competitor's turn difference would likewise have to be pretty tight, under 100 turns at least, to violate this patent, because any more than that and you're getting the very noise that this pickup design is intended to cancel. But again, if your lawyer stinks and you get an unusually gullible jury...

At the very least, as evidenced by the Fralin Unbucker, you can certainly make a mismatched humbucker with the same gauge on both coils.

So it is not true that DiMarzio has patented mismatched coil humbuckers.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Evan Skopp said:
DiMarzio got their trademark because they asserted "acquired distinctiveness" based on what they claimed was exclusive use of exposed double cream humbucker bobbins for five continuous years.

Interestingly, DiMarzio’s lawyer also represents WD Music Products. He used the same "five years" argument to get WD a trademark on the lipstick tube pickup. Never mind that during the so-called five years (1995-1999) not only was Seymour Duncan making and selling lipstick tube pickups, but so were Charvel, Jerry Jones, Ibanez, Chandler and a little company called Danelectro who was bringing in boatloads of guitars with lipstick tube pickups.

Anyone see a pattern here?
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... and Danelectro was putting lipstick pups on their guitars since the late '50s early '60s... before them it was Sears/Silvertone.

... well Evan... I was thinking of putting a DMZ single coil (or two) in my Brazen Eternity... but now that you cleared that up regarding "lawsuits"... "F" DMZ. :D
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Ah, I was not aware it was merely a trademark - "everyone" kept saying "patent", which I know is substantially different in most cases from a trademark. I thought "they" knew what they were talking about with the patent issue - guess I was wrong and shoulda looked it up myself.

That said, trademarks are perfectly fine - every company has to have one and should protect it. However, if DiMarzio had invented the color, then I could see it as a trademark, but it's a naturally-occurring color based on the combination of certain chemicals and a manufacturing process. As I understand it, no natural occureences can be trademarked or patented for exclusivity - only when you have a specific formula that yields a specific result.

Ergo, if all creme parts made by DiMarzio use the same formula and all come out the same color, all they can lay claim to is that specific shade, which means if Duncan establishes a formula whereby they can make a similar but noticeably different shade when held side by side, they could, in fact, make double-creme production models.

I've got a few ideas on this as far as colors, but there's no way I'd post them here - DiMarzio has spies everywhere :lol:
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

DrNewcenstein said:
Ah, I was not aware it was merely a trademark - "everyone" kept saying "patent", which I know is substantially different in most cases from a trademark.
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"merely"

At least stupid, pointless, obvious patents based on other people's prior art have the mercy of expiring in a reasonable time.

Think about it. The only real inventions in a a double creme humbucker with one awg42 and one awg43 coils are:
  • the magnet pickup in the first place, a real invention
  • the humbucking with the RWRP coil, which I think we all agree is a real idea, a real invention and would be worth protecting

Both of these were Gibson's inventions.

Yet it is DiMarzio having all, and I mean literally all, the intellectual property on a double creme awg42/awg43 humbucker - because they filed the trivial idea of mixed coils recently enough, and their bloody trademark expires in what - 75 years? I don't even know.

All the while the real inventors get nothing and competitors who want to make products along the lines of the original inventors with the same bloody color as the original inventors are prevented from doing so. Even Gibson is not allowed to make double creme humbuckers.

And it is not that any of this nonsense would be upheld in court if you really challenged it. But there is more such abuse in e.g. the software industry and they fight so hard that the legal weaponry (namely lawyers) is unaffordable for medium-sized musical companies.

The only people who can do anything about this are the musicians who can review DiMarzio's intellectual property claims and if they decide that Dimarzio is overall bad for the development of great gear at good prices then boycott them and spread the word.
 
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Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Zhangliqun said:
They didn't. Their patent is limited to a humbucker with different gauges of wire (say 42 on one, 43 on the other) on each coil and with, as the patent language says, "substantially the same number of turns" of wire on both coils.
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It's a shame such ambiguity is permitted in a patent.



The trademark is unfortunate, but is what it is. If anyone freely stated that the double cream look was in this day synonymous with Dimarzio he would either being consciously lying or an idiot. I'm not even going to address the merits of trademarking color, especially those pertaining to objects or logos in which the party owns no patents or trademarks.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Gearjoneser said:
Does anyone know if these can be custom ordered as a Floor Shop Custom, meaning they're the same price as regular Duncans? That's how all the other colors are ordered.

The trademark just means that other companies can't put them into production and make them a regular item. It doesn't mean you can't custom order them....as far as I know.
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I got a Shop Floor Custom set for one of my LPs a few years ago. There was a few weeks wait until the production runs of the model pups I wanted rolled around. There was also a slight upcharge over regular Duncans however, it was well worth it for the look though. The pups arrived covered but no big to remove those.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Hmmm. Maybe the Unfair Competition angle is worth checking out? The U.S. has laws that protect against monopolizing a given industry or market.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

All this goes to underscore my conviction that I will never, EVER, buy a pickup from Dimarzio. I may purchase pickups from other manufacturers, if their product appeals to me, but not Dimarzio. Most likely, I'll just buy Duncans because I've been very happy with the SD product line, and the company's business model/practice.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

JamesPaul said:
I got a Shop Floor Custom set for one of my LPs a few years ago. There was a few weeks wait until the production runs of the model pups I wanted rolled around. There was also a slight upcharge over regular Duncans however, it was well worth it for the look though. The pups arrived covered but no big to remove those.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought.....Shop Floor Custom with the $10 upcharge of a nickel cover. I'll be honest, I'm too cheap to pay $160 plus tax, plus shipping for a humbucker that's still essentially an employee made pickup. So is that that case? Can we get this for around $90? $160 isn't happening for me, with my budget for pickups.

And is it possible to get an overwound 59B as a Shop Floor Custom? Or is that strictly a Custom Shop job?
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Well I'm glad I don't really like double cream humbuckers then...

I don't look down on those who do, but I'm not big overall on cream on a guitar, although I have some with cream.

I wasn't keen on zebras either and was planning on getting covers for my Duncan Distortion & Seymourizer II, but I never did, and I got used to the zebras. They're a big part of the look of my Les Paul.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

I don't have any guitar where I need the double cream look either, but it seems to me that you could contact a Duncan dealer like Wymore Guitars, and tell him what you want, and it'd be made by the Shop Floor for the regular price.

I don't know specifically if you'd need it to be covered by a nickel cover for $10 more or not. I'm pretty sure that telling them what you want would result in GETTING what you want. There's no law against a company making something that a customer wants. The only law covered by a trademark is a company mass producing said item and advertising it to the world.
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

uOpt said:
Trademarks based on color have been shot down before. In this case it should be extra easy because since Gibson's original humbuckers had randomly color bobbins clearly there was prior art. The fact that Gibson cannot claim a trademark since they did not defend that trademark only means it is free fire for all, not that somebody else can now go and trademark it on their own.

The real problem with DiMarzio abusing the trademark and patent systems (you should go read some of their trivial junk that made it through the patent office) is not that it is impossible to shoot down that nonsense in theory.

The problem is, and DiMarzio deliberately exploits this, that industries with much more money involved than the music industry, have driven up the prices of good intellectual property lawyers to about $600/hour.

Clearly, a company like Seymour Duncan might look big compared to -whatever- WCR, but they won't go spend a million bucks to shoot down one of DiMarzio's abusive trademarks or patents.

The worst part is that all of this combined makes it hard for people who actually invented something cool to get a patent.

%%

Boycotting DiMarzio on part of the consumer is the best approach here. I don't ask anybody to skip DiMarzio products just because of some forum post. But you can use Google's patent search to look for DiMarzio's patents and read for yourselves. You can read this very thread for the issue of a color trademark. Then make up your mind.
Click to expand...

Thank you :beerchug:
 
Re: Really, is there ANYTHING that can be done about Dimarzio's double creme patent?

Fact - Dimarzio was known for double cream pickups - Gibson was not, Duncan was not. The double cream humbucker became the symbol of Dimarzio. Dimarzio protected their symbol.

Fact - No one is suffering because of Dimarzio's trademark - theres more pickup companies out there than ever before making gobs and gobs of money. So there's no "unfair competition" or anything like that.

There's no shady business practices going on - just regular business practices.

You don't like the pickup? Don't buy it. For me, I like Dimarzio pickups (as I said before, I like Duncans, EMGs, Fralins, etc, etc, etc). But right now, Dimarzio gets my money.
 
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