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Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

guitarworld.com

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Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#41

Post by shrubble »

From the related story on the same site (not able to trademark the designs): https://www.guitarworld.com/music-industry/fender-legal-ruli...

The ruling comes 17 years after Fender was famously unsuccessful in its attempts to make its Stratocaster, Telecaster and Precision guitar body shapes a trademark in the US, decades after the designs were first produced.

That litigation process lasted five years, and demonstrated that countless companies had used the body shapes that Fender had sought to trademark. In the end, the courts ruled that the Stratocaster shape was “so common that it is depicted as a generic electric guitar in a dictionary”.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#42

Post by liveoneggs »

piltdownman wrote: post #10
the__alchemist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this captures the most important points. I was just thinking about this: Would it kill guitar makers to stop copying the Strat and [P|J] bass? It is wild that the earliest guitar designs are still ubiquitous / the most popular types. For anyone not familiar: The matter is not about iterating on these original designs; there's lots of that too, including by the same companies! It's about instruments that are e…

In terms of ergonomics, resonance and so on, there's not many terribly optimal solidbody electronic guitar shapes that deviate from the Les Paul/Strat/Tele trinity. Explorers, Flying Vs and the like are basically genre-oddities for aesthetics. Guitars are not about aesthetics, otherwise Fender wouldn't have marques like Squier or ranges like Highway One to differentiate their low-quality tiers.

If guitars were about ergonomics, technology, and sound they would be copying strandbergs!

These vintage designs are all about nostalgia and looks.

Anyway Bo Diddley demonstrated the most optimal body shape for holding electronics. :)

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#43

Post by criddell »

ablation wrote: post #19
ofrzeta wrote: post #13

Thomann has their own brand "Harley Benton" with a lot of Strat models. Also Telecasters. Will they be sued as well?

They're surprisingly good value for money too, if you go in with your eyes open. For the price they play pretty well.

Even very cheap electric guitars are surprisingly good these days. As long as you are willing to pay for (or do) a full set up, you really can't go wrong.

Justin Sandercoe (from the JustinGuitar YouTube channel) bought the cheapest electric guitar from Amazon and did a series of videos [1] with a guitar tech friend of his where they did a complete set up of the guitar. Several times through the videos both of them commented on how surprisingly good the guitar was. FWIW, the guitar they bought had the strat body shape.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0SHE_xooyU

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#44

Post by bobchadwick »

piltdownman wrote: post #10
the__alchemist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this captures the most important points. I was just thinking about this: Would it kill guitar makers to stop copying the Strat and [P|J] bass? It is wild that the earliest guitar designs are still ubiquitous / the most popular types. For anyone not familiar: The matter is not about iterating on these original designs; there's lots of that too, including by the same companies! It's about instruments that are e…

In terms of ergonomics, resonance and so on, there's not many terribly optimal solidbody electronic guitar shapes that deviate from the Les Paul/Strat/Tele trinity. Explorers, Flying Vs and the like are basically genre-oddities for aesthetics. Guitars are not about aesthetics, otherwise Fender wouldn't have marques like Squier or ranges like Highway One to differentiate their low-quality tiers.

Guitars are very much about aesthetics, which is why they're so often strategically placed in the background on Zoom calls.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#45

Post by throwatdem12311 »

My first and last Fender guitar was a Squier when I was a kid and just starting to learn.

I’m sure the guitars are fine (the squier was for what it is), but I’ve always gotten the ick from their business practices.

These days there really isn’t anything special about their guitars there are a bajillion copycats that are almost as good, some that are better.

This kind of legal campaign just reeks of desperation from losing at competition. When you can’t win on merit and value, abuse the legal system. Gross. They’ve been on my shitlist for a long time and it looks like they’re staying there permanently. What a shame for such an influential cultural brand.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#46

Post by coldpie »

bluGill wrote: post #27
boxed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademarks are infinite though. Which makes sense, since otherwise anyone could produce "Coca Cola".

Trademarks only apply if the thing isn't generic. I can legally copy the recipe for coca cola (if I can figure it out) and sell that as 'bluGill cola', but I can't sell it as coca cola even though it would be identical. There is ample evidence that the shape is generic - it has been copied by far too many to claim it isn't generic. I doubt they can show a properly registered copyright, which would have been required…

> I doubt they can show a properly registered copyright, which would have been required before 1978. I doubt the copyright laws back then would have even allowed copyrighting the shape like that (but I'm not a lawyer).

None of that matters to Fender's case here, though. They benefit regardless of the outcome in court. If someone fights them and Fender wins, or no one fights them, then they cause an enormous, permanent headache to almost every single one of their competitors. If someone fights them and Fender loses, they cause an enormous, temporary headache to almost every single one of their competitors and otherwise there's no change in the market. The worst case for Fender is the status quo, there's no reason for them not to pursue this.

The only way Fender loses here is if they piss off enough customers to cause a drop in sales. But that seems unlikely to me, even extremely pissed off customers forget about these things pretty quick, as Reddit and Elon Musk's white supremacist social network demonstrated after shitting all over their own users and seeing no terribly significant drop in usage.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#49

Post by criddell »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #15
zkanda wrote: post #12

Fender doesn’t even make the best strat and so overpriced, but I guess it’s subjective.

Yes, it's easier to settle a debate on the best Linux distro than on the best Strat. For Mayonnaise, Billy Corgan used a 60$ guitar that produced unwanted feedback but kept the sounds into the final result which makes it so unique, it was the best in that situation.

Exactly!

Tom Morello used a $50 plywood guitar played through a 20 watt solid state practice amp on the track "Tire Me" and won a Grammy.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#50

Post by coldpie »

myself248 wrote: post #47

Okay, none of the guitars on that page look like an "S" to me. What am I missing, and what are they protecting?

Sorry if I'm explaining the joke, but the term comes from Fender's guitars called Stratocasters. It's a popular guitar shape & configuration, so very many companies have made their own versions of it. However, Stratocaster is a trademark of Fender, so companies don't like to use that name to describe their products, to try to avoid Fender's lawsuits. So the industry has used the term "S-type" or "S-style" to refer to Stratocaster style guitars without actually using the trademarked name.

Similarly, "T-type" and "T-style" is used to refer to guitars similar to Fender's Telecaster guitars.

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