The Bridgerton – Gibson guitars

THE BRIDGERTON 

One of Netflix’s most acclaimed series of the year, Bridgerton, has hit the news as a consequence of the copyright infringement claim filed against a musical. 

Briefly, Bridgerton is a popular period drama produced by Netflix and inspired by Julia Quinn’s bestseller novels. 

Back in 2020, when the first season of the Bridgerton drama was released, two musical composers started posting on the social media platform TikTok songs based on the plot, the characters and even dialogues of the original series. After the success obtained on TikTok, they launched a musical called “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical”, achieving such a success that both composers won the best musical theatre album in this year’s Grammy Awards.  

The creators of “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical” were sued by Netflix before the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleging copyright infringement for quoting the series directly and using material from it. 

Netflix allegedly tried to negotiate a licence agreement with the 2 composers, to no avail.

At the moment, the defendants have not yet responded to the lawsuit, but the scheduled performances of "The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical" have been cancelled. 

GIBSON BRANDS – DEAN GUITARS

In this recent legal dispute taking place in the U.S., the guitar producer Gibson Brands Inc., sued Dean Guitars’ parent company, Armadillo, for trade mark infringement. Dean has been commercialising similar guitars to Gibson’s, including among others the Flying V-style guitar. From its side, Gibson argued that the shapes of their guitars were registered in the U.S. as a trade mark.

Back in May, a U.S. Court partially upheld the claim, confirming that Dean infringed the Flying V- style guitar. However, the decision did not ban Dean from further manufacturing and commercialising the above-mentioned guitars and only granted $4,000 in damages to Gibson.  

More recently, the Court issued a permanent injunction that will prevent Dean from manufacturing, commercialising and selling the guitars that were considered to be infringing Gibson’s trade mark. Moreover, the Court concluded that the shape of Gibson’s guitars has not become generic, as claimed by Dean. In addition to this, the Court required Dean to pay a compensation of $330,000 in legal fees.

Dean can now lodge an appeal against the decision, so we'll keep you posted on our blog with the latest news.