A Travesty Of Justice

I am Glenn Treibitz, owner of Sweet 16 Musical Properties and the historic Hollywood Piano stores in California.  This website was created to allow the public to have the documents and facts associated with the Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH v. Piano Factory Group, Inc. and Sweet 16 Musical Properties, Inc. lawsuit.  As a piano dealer, I have been involved in the sale and rental of over 50,000 pianos of all modern and many historical piano brands.  I also have created my own lines of pianos selling numerous pianos manufactured to our specifications and quality expectations using our own brand names.  The Schiedmayer piano brand was one of these, which I started sales of in 2007, after filing to register the SCHIEDMAYER trademark for pianos in August of 2002.  In April of 2015, I was sued by Elianne Schiedmayer and her company Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH to cancel my trademark registration that I had used for my piano line for many years without any objection from any member of the Schiedmayer family.  Over six and a half years of litigation later and going all the way up on appeal, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s decision to cancel my registration claiming "a false association" with Ms. Schiedmayer and her company.

I have never in my life have been treated with more disrespect by individuals involved in this case, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the Federal Court system than during these proceedings.  Without exception, everyone involved in this case (but my attorney) has worked extremely hard to paint me as a unscrupulous businessman intent on inducing piano purchasers to buy pianos of inferior quality by using my theft of Ms. Schiedmayer’s family name.  That simply is not and never was true. I run the most honored and award winning piano company in the country--the only piano company selected as top 100 in the world by the National Association of Music Merchants 7 times for our reputation, practices, integrity and customer service. 

I did not know anything about Ms. Schiedmayer or the history of Schiedmayer piano making by various independent branches of the Schiedmayer family at the time I selected the SCHIEDMAYER brand.  I thought the brand had been abandoned by the Kawai Piano company and that it would be a good opportunity to use it for a line of affordable instruments made to my demanding quality standards that piano purchasers could rely on for many years.  As with nearly every modern piano brand being sold today, I turned to piano manufacturers in China to initially make the pianos to my specifications and then import them to the US for sale under the SCHIEDMAYER brand in my showrooms. Our company made the first pianos from China using genuine Abel hammers and high quality European components long before other piano brands adopted this practice. 

I had no idea Ms. Schiedmayer or any member of the Schiedmayer Celeste family objected to my adoption and use of the SCHIEDMAYER brand for pianos prior to their filing their lawsuit without warning.  I had no idea Ms. Schiedmayer or Schiedmayer Celesta existed at the time I selected the mark, and no indication Ms. Schiedmayer objected from the only interaction I ever had with her in 2002 when she called asking me about the domain schiedmayer.com I owned. She asked why I owned it. I told her because we were planning to make Schiedmayer pianos since Kawai had abandoned the piano line. I was stunned to then be sued 13 years later by Ms. Schiedmayer and her company so they could cancel my registration and take my brand away from me.

As we went through this proceeding, I learned that Ms. Schiedmayer has been telling the public that while her late husband, Georg Schiedmayer, stopped all manufacture and sales of pianos in 1980, none of the companies (Ibach, Kawai, Sojin, Thomann, etc.) who subsequently manufactured and sold pianos under the SCHIEDMAYER brand supposedly had any rights to do so.  This surprised me greatly, given I knew the individuals at Kawai involved in selling these pianos and through long experience with them knew that Kawai was not the kind of company who would falsely represent their right to make the brand names they sold.  Nor did Ms. Schiedmayer’s claims agree with the many authorities on piano provenance I and the entire piano industry rely on to identify the genuine manufacturer of pianos we sell.  These include the Pierce Piano Atlas considered “the Bible” on piano provenance which has been relied on daily for decades by piano dealers. 

This website contains the documents provided by the parties during discovery, trial, and during the appeal so that the public can review and make their own judgment as to the validity of Ms. Schiedmayer’s claims regarding the history of the SCHIEDMAYER brand for pianos.  I have also included a link to the extremely valuable service provided by the Pierce Piano Atlas at https://www.searchppa.com to allow any owners of SCHIEDMAYER branded pianos to find out who of the many companies actually made their piano and the history of its brand. My research has indicated that every major reputable source on the subject of pianos and their history clearly lays out that piano manufacturing and sales of SCHIEDMAYER branded pianos have not been controlled or manufactured by a German Schiedmayer-controlled company for 40+ years. I leave it to the public to determine whether Ms. Schiedmayer’s conduct in this case was an attempt to re-write history. While I do not understand the reasons why the history needed to be changed, her attorney went to great lengths to do so during the proceeding. I even learned during my deposition that I had been surreptitiously illegally recorded under California law in my place of business by her attorney’s son in attempt to generate evidence to discredit me. 

In our final filing to the Federal Circuit, we officially went on the record saying the Court’s attempt to treat my statements as admissions that I engage in fraudulent business were taken out of context, because they were.  I did not admit my use of SCHIEDMAYER was fraudulent in my deposition.  Frankly, as was pointed out in our briefs, to rely on Pianos for Dummies as the irrefutable truth on piano provenance just because Ms. Schiedmayer’s attorney read from it onto the record during a deposition and ignore the Pierce Piano Atlas as being hearsay is a definite double standard. It also indicates that disregarding the authoritative and recognized Pierce Piano Atlas for the "Dummies" series of books was simply done by the court to help reach their desired outcome.

The Federal Circuit has an opinion.  However, it is just their opinion, as is the opinion of the TTAB.  The TTAB improperly excluded my evidence and bought the false narrative Schiedmayer's attorney pushed relentlessly that I was engaging in some kind of fraud on the public. Just because the Federal Circuit decided to agree with the TTAB does not make what the TTAB did any more accurate or true. Again it is just their opinion. 

My hope is that this site will help the public appreciate the injustice done by the courts in taking my trademark away from me under a false narrative about integrity.  I believe that an objective consideration of these documents will allow the public to come to their own conclusion about the truth of the claims made by Ms. Schiedmayer and Schiedmayer Celesta about their ownership of the SCHIEDMAYER piano brand.  I had hoped for evenhanded treatment by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board judges, and again from the judges of the Federal Circuit, but my experience is that both tribunals were more than happy to join in with incorrectly characterizing the information in this proceeding to find whatever facts were necessary, change the laws of this country as needed to ensure I lost my trademark registration. After this experience, I have considerably less faith and confidence in the inspiration, objectivity, and competence of our legal system, to my great disappointment.

-Glenn Treibitz