horseshoe pickups

[billcreller]

 The horseshoe pick up was supposedly the very first "electric" guitar pick up, in Rickenbacher steel guitars, in 1931 or '32. A pick up builder, Jason Lollar, is producing the horseshoe pick up again after a short hiatus .  I started making the horseshoe magnets some years back, but didn't know about any legal issues with that. Until that time, Rickenbacher didn't have replacements for those, and a call to their place was answered by a guy who didn't know what the hell I was talking about.
  Then I told another guy how I made them, and he started producing some, and soon quit after Rickenbacher made some threats , from what I read. 
Anyway, Jason Lollar told me that Rickenbacher ( spelled Rickenbacker now, since the advent of WW2) had a copywrite on the magnets, but Lollar said a patent ( which ran out ages ago), cannot be copywrited by law.  So now, a man is producing new magnets for Jason, which are really well made. So the complete horseshoe pick up assembly is, or soon will be, available again.  I've been building them strictly for my project steel guitars, to avoid any legal issues, even though I've sold a few of the guitars.

 Just thought you folks might be interested.....

[tubesornothing]

Patent does not mean you can't make them, you just have to pay a license fee.  And you need to be caught too.  Lollar, who is well known, would probably get a cease and desist letter, but a solo builder in the basement probably would go unnoticed, as long as you did not flaunt it.

[jjasilli]

Patent does not mean you can't make them, you just have to pay a license fee.  No, that's not a correct statement of the law:  ". . .a patent provides the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent

So you first need a license to legally Make the thing.  But that alone is insufficient.  You need to have gotten further licening rights to atually do anything with it once you've made it!  (The law may be different in Canada).

[tubesornothing]

he he...

...  And you need to be caught too...

I am not surprised to hear from you jj, considering your background. 



I seem to recall something (prehaps a court case) that said a patent holder could not prevent someone from using a patent as long as it was licensed...

The idea being that the author of the original work would always get credit and money, but they could not prevent someone from using the patent as long as it met the licensing arrangements.  Now the licensing arrangements might be preventative of themselves...

[billcreller]

The way I understand it, the patent on these ran out a long time ago, and Rick has a "trademark" on the patent, and "appearance" if the horseshoe style. And since I know zero about the legal issues, I'm just passing along the info I read.  And I was told that a patent cannot be trademarked (??) 
  Anyway, the fact the the parts are around for folks to work with seemed worth mentioning.
I still build  the magnets for my own projects, and use Lollar's coils.
The new magnets are made of a different alloy than I use, but both seem to work OK.