Folks, before anyone gets more overheated about the implications of this purchase, let me offer some information. The standard for infringement is likelihood of confusion among the buying public. This OP knew going in that he was purchasing a knock off and titled his post "Counterfeit Ric," confirming his lack of confusion. So, no harm to this buyer. Now, the question is whether this product harms the manufacturer or the buying public at large. A new Rick goes for about $2K. Anything new that's represented as genuine but that's priced significantly less than list price is understood not to be genuine. (In court this is sometimes established with survey evidence.) Similarly, when you see a new Rolex sold on the street for $200 you know it's a fake. So, as a rule, only the unjustifiably uninformed buyer would consider this product to be made by Rickenbacker. Other mitigating factors are that this product resembles the genuine article only in shape; other critical elements (pickups, bridge, electronics, tuner, finish etc.) are clearly off the mark. Again, low likelihood of confusion among the purchasing public. But for the superfake TRC this would hardly be an issue.
Now we turn to potential harm to the manufacturer. Does the sale of this product interfere with Rickenbacker's ability to sell its own products? Is there confusion in the marketplace? In this instance I'd argue against it. Everyone knows what Rics cost, and where they come from. Here the product is offered from an overseas vendor. The target purchasers for this vendor are people who might like, but cannot afford, the real item. This suggests that Rickenbacker customers are not going to have their heads turned by this cheaper option. The ONLY issue that would be offensive--which is NOT indicated by the OP's comments-- would be someone importing a number of these knockoffs and trying to sell them in the US as legitimate. This would be pretty hard to do considering how they're configured. I do agree that the "Made in the USA" TRC is clearly trademark infringement but, in the OP's case, he understands he bought a counterfeit item.
As for notifying Rickenbacker; every major company has a staff of in-house attorneys or has a retained one (like me) on speed dial to deal with counterfeits or even gray market goods. This won't come as news to them.
As to the TB member that insulted the OP, you're entitled to your opinion but it's not one that was appropriately expressed, especially where the point you're trying to make is counter-indicated by his posts and the general features of this product.
