A jury in a second trial has discovered Dean Guitars’ dad or mum firm Armadillo responsible of trademark infringement and counterfeiting of Gibson’s guitar designs, after Armadillo appealed towards the preliminary ruling.

Nevertheless, the decision isn’t a transparent victory for Gibson. The jury has additionally dominated that Armadillo solely owes Gibson $11 in damages – and that Gibson’s trademark for the ES physique form is generic, and needs to be cancelled.

The jury trial concluded at present (21 March 2025), nearly three years after the preliminary jury verdict was filed. Armadillo’s CEO on the time, Evan Rubinson, said the model’s intention to attraction. And in July of 2024, it was profitable in convincing the fifth Circuit Court docket of Appeals to re-open the case.

What’s Armadillo nonetheless responsible of?

After one other jury trial, Armadillo has did not meaningfully reverse probably the most vital features of the jury’s verdicts. The 2025 jury ruling finds that Armadillo deliberately infringed on Gibson’s V, Explorer and SG physique form logos, in addition to on Gibson’s Hummingbird wordmark.

Notably, the 2022 jury discovered that Armadillo infringed on the Dove Wing headstock however not the Flying V wordmark – in 2025, it’s now the opposite manner round – Armadillo is within the clear concerning the Dove Wing headstock, however has infringed on the Flying V wordmark.

In addition to easy trademark infringement, Armadillo has additionally been discovered responsible of promoting or advertising counterfeits of Gibson’s Flying V, Explorer, SG physique shapes, plus the Flying V and Hummingbird wordmarks.

Is that this a transparent victory for Gibson?

Whereas Armadillo is now dealing with its V and Z fashions being axed as soon as once more, this isn’t a complete and full win for Gibson. Firstly – the jury declared that for all of the infringing marks, Gibson basically sat on its fingers for too lengthy, and may have accused Armadillo/Dean of copyright rather a lot sooner than it did, inflicting “undue prejudice” to Armadillo.

For the Explorer and Flying V marks, the jury declared that Gibson ought to have recognized Dean was utilizing its marks as early as 1976 and 1977 respectively – ie, the primary couple of years that Dean was in existence.

And so in the case of financial compensation, the jury has additionally declared that Armadillo owes Gibson simply $11. As a demonstrative quantity for the influence Dean’s fashions have had on Gibson, it’s fairly small – nonetheless, final time, the choose ordered Armadillo to pay almost $300,000 in Gibson’s authorized charges – and so the precise quantity that must be paid could possibly be rather more.

Will Gibson lose its ES physique form trademark?

However maybe most drastically, the jury was given the chance to determine if any of Gibson’s physique form logos have been too generic to be infringed on. In 2022, the jury didn’t declare any of Gibson’s marks generic – however in 2025, it has discovered that the ES mark generic, and has said it has been so since 1996.

The presiding choose nonetheless must difficulty a court docket order to implement the judgement of the jury, and it’s right here the place we’ll be taught the destiny of any Dean fashions discovered to infringe on Gibson’s designs, and the destiny of Gibson’s ES trademark.

When approached for remark, Gibson said its intention to attraction towards the ES verdict, and supplied the next assertion: “This case was about defending Gibson’s legacy of innovation and its mental property, and never about cash. It was about defending American innovation and music evolution. We’re extremely happy with the court docket’s second determination in our favor together with discovering the defendants responsible not solely of trademark infringement but in addition of counterfeiting.”

Armadillo didn’t reply instantly to a request for remark.

What occurs now?

The presiding choose nonetheless must implement a judgement stemming from this jury verdict. In 2022, this initially resulted within the cessation of Dean’s advertising and sale of all infringing guitars plus $4,000 in damages – the quantity decreed by the preliminary jury verdict. This was then adopted by an order for Armadillo to pay $160,000 in authorized charges for Gibson.

This time round, nonetheless, the choose additionally must determine the destiny of the ES trademark atop what occurs to Armadillo’s infringing designs.