Am Freitag, 20. September 2019 11:00 CEST, David van Ooijen
<davidvanooi...@gmail.com> schrieb:
> I think the author of the video is too quick in accusing Thomann
> instead of the Chinese supplier.
I think the author of said video might be up for an unpleasant surprise - he's
accusing
Thomann of a crime. He better has some convincing prove of evidence.
> Chinese suppliers of copied
> instruments often use the pictures from the originals, and not form
> their own work. If you go internet shopping for a cheap Chinese Gibson,
> Fender or fancy jazz guitar, you'll find the suppliers use the pictures
> taken from the websites of the original guitars, and not pictures from
> what you will actually get.
I don't think this is a case of a stolen picture. If I understand correctly,
the instruments sold by
Le Luth Doré are in fact produced by a third party manufacturer ("...
provisions of LLD’s manufacturing agreements"
to quote their statement). It's rather likely that said (unnamed) manufacutrer
(most likely a chinese company)
did sell the same instruments to Thomann (a company that doesn't build
instruments at all, it's just a large resale
company). Whether or not this was legal depends on the contracts between Le
Luth Doré and it's manufacturer.
Accusing Thomann of "copyright/inelectual property" infringement is pretty
silly. They most likely just bought up
a charge of instruments on the international market - after all, those
instruments don't seem to be part of their
regular catalog.
> I'm sure Thomann violates copyright laws by
> distributing these instruments, if they actually did because in all the
> stories I haven't heard anyone yet who actually bought one of the
> Thomann Chanterelle copycat lutes, but I think the focus of LDD should
> be at looking at what's going on at their Chinese lute supplier.
> On a side note. I'm interested in the copyright on a historically
> accurate lute. If a luthier makes a historically accurate lute, whose
> copyright are you infringing if you make that same historically
> accurate lute?
Even so IANAL I'm pretty shure there is no "copyright" on instrument (or any
kind of industrial) design.
There is either a patent (highly unlikely ;-) or what is called a 'utility
patent' / 'utility model' (germ. "Gebrauchsmuster").
Now, in most jurisdictions, those need to be registered before you can enforce
them. Maybe Le Luth Doré might
have failed to do so. Or the chinese company just didn't care - this IS a known
problem in the chinese-european
trade.
Cheers, RalfD
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