but at the end of the day they're not much more than forgeries, hence the lawsuit :jim
I know this is a long dead topic, but if anyone reads this, I want to say this: this is so wrong. A forgery suggest that the item looks like the real thing but is inherently of a worse quality. Forgery also suggests that the item cost less to produce, involves a lot of corner-cutting and the sole purpose of it is to trick people into paying way more than this item is worth just because it looks like the real thing. A forgery is a form of fraud.
But it's not the case with these guitars! These guitars are made with high quality in mind, to be great guitars on their own and not to trick their owners. When one sees a Tokai guitar in a shop, they know they are buying a Tokai guitar, not a Gibson guitar, so they know what are paying for and what they are getting for their money. They may be visually identical to Gibsons, but they clearly indicate that they are not Gibsons on the headstock.
Plus keep in mind they started producing these so-called "lawsuit" guitars at the time when Gibson didn't make good quality production Les Pauls, so you can't call these companies frauds because they offered guitar players great production (that is non-custom shop) instruments that they could not get from Gibson at that time.