Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars • Hacker News Board

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#71

Post by coldpie » Thu, May 21, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #67

The biggest takeaway from this thread: Wow, nerds really don't know the difference between trademark and copyright

I feel your pain. Learning the basics of IP law is one of those "curses of knowledge"[1] because you can never not sound like a pedantic asshole whenever someone who doesn't know IP law tries to talk about IP law. "No, it's not a trademark suit, it doesn't matter if they've tried to defend it before. What, why are you even bringing up patents, it's not a specific, narrow invention, and it would've expired decades ago even if it was. Ahhh!"

[1] https://xkcd.com/1015/

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#72

Post by bityard » Thu, May 21, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #45

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 l…

I am looking to get back into playing bass and have been completely out of the loop for about the last decade. When I started looking around to see what was available, it seems to me that guitar and bass prices are attached more to brand/model reputation than the actual objective and subjective quality of the instrument.

For example, the Squier and Fender basses with the same features are essentially identical. The Fender might have a higher quality finish and slightly better hardware (and is maybe made in a different country?) but I watched _many_ YouTube videos where professional bass players could not make one sound better than the other. Despite a 2x-3x price delta.

And most interestingly, Yamaha bass guitars are among the lowest cost for a brand-new bass, yet are also made surprisingly well and sound as good as some basses that cost an order of magnitude more.

This just further confirms my observation that in most any market, it always seems that the most popular brand is rarely the best overall value.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#73

Post by BJones12 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

jpfromlondon wrote: post #29

criddell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the Chinese firm didn't even show up to defend themselves, so it was a default judgement.

I suspect because the Chinese firm in question was a fabrication of FMIC for exactly this purpose.

There are a lot of real Chinese firms (factories) that make unapproved copies including body shape, headstock shape, logo, and brand name.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#74

Post by 827a » Thu, May 21, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

Unpopular opinion: I struggle to get angry at this. These are clearly rip-offs of the Stratocaster design. Sure, Fender makes crappy guitars nowadays and has mostly ruined their brand. Go make a new design. Let Fender die. Cases like this are exactly what copyright law is made for, and its a judicious and good application of it. I'm not going to feel sorry for these shops because they're small mom & pop shops when I would feel angry about it if it were some huge chinese factory doing it. The same laws apply to everyone.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#75

Post by coldpie » Thu, May 21, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #72

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #45

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 l…

I am looking to get back into playing bass and have been completely out of the loop for about the last decade. When I started looking around to see what was available, it seems to me that guitar and bass prices are attached more to brand/model reputation than the actual objective and subjective quality of the instrument. For example, the Squier and Fender basses with the same features are essentially identical. The F…

You're pretty much correct, yeah. If you want to know what the actual benefit to playing a more expensive and/or name-brand instrument is, it's because it's largely a signal to others about your self. Playing a recognizable brand or a obscure-but-expensive brand can show to others that you're serious & knowledgeable about the hobby, instead of just playing a $150 strat clone you bought off Amazon. If you want to make money off of it, it's also a sign to your potential customers that you know what you're doing. Above like $500, they all play pretty much the same, but they make different statements about your self. It's up to you how much value that has to you personally, but please don't make the mistake of being surprised that others put a lot of value on how others perceive them. That little fact accounts for an absolutely enormous chunk of economy activity, it'd be silly to write it off as unimportant.

Yamaha makes fantastic stuff, they're a great choice.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#76

Post by spamizbad » Thu, May 21, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

plasticsoprano wrote: post #64

spamizbad wrote: post #59

If you're not guitar gear nerd, you might be unaware: Fender doesn't make the best version of its various guitar shapes (with one debatable exception)[1]. If you want an off-the-rack "S-Style" guitar (Stratocaster) there's a handful of premium, smaller brands that will make an objectively better guitar than any of Fender's offerings, including their premium "Ultra" series: Suhr, Anderson Guitarworks, James Tyler Guit…

So why not license the shape then? They could do a royalty with those deemed of quality and deny a license to those that are of lower quality and then sue them if they don't use the design. This would allow them to manage quality with lower reputational harm.

Fender does this with their headstock design for replacement necks only. However they forbid license-holding manufacturers from both selling a complete guitar with a Fender headstock shape and even showing the guitar neck on a finished guitar during the sale process.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#77

Post by skeeter2020 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:05 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #51

scrumper wrote: post #33

Since 2020 Fender has been owned by Servco Pacific, a Hawaiian car dealer that has some musical instrument holdings as well (Roland). It has a private equity arm attached from which presumably this idea came. I wonder if someone up high in Honolulu has decided it's time to start the value extraction phase or prepare for a sale. It doesn't make much sense otherwise: this is a very brand destructive move in a market th…

Not a lawyer and I don't have any insights to this, but I wouldn't speculate based off this - trademark holders kind of "have to" pursue each violation, because otherwise they carry the risk of the trademark becoming too widely used/generic so it would become meaningless.

>> otherwise they carry the risk of the trademark becoming too widely used/generic so it would become meaningless.

if you've seen a picture of an electric guitar in the last 75 years you'd know this horse bolted a while ago. The "classic" styles of stratocaster, telecaster, les paul and SG have been made by everybody since forever. And that's before you even establish if Fender has some form of "trademark" (on a shape!)

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#78

Post by bluGill » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:10 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #46

bluGill wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, permanen…

Fender loses lawyer costs which will be high if this goes to court. And my prediction is they get sued for legal costs after they lose. Though I reasonable odds a judge will toss this out before trial and so legal costs are not high.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#79

Post by bityard » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:11 PM UTC

tiahura wrote: post #56

zkanda wrote: post #12

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

The body has literally 0 effect on the sound of an electric guitar. Only the pickups matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE

Well, the pickups and a few other things (like having volume controls), but yeah. That was a fun watch and confirmed much of what I had previously suspected.

But to be fair, overall quality involves more than just sound. The big one for me is, how long will it stay in tune? And in general, have good action, be solid and hold together over the years? Tuned strings create quite a lot of static force which becomes dynamic when you play it. Some uber-cheap bass guitars I played never had a hope. Wouldn't stay in tune and action was all wonky and couldn't be corrected for, even with kludges like shims in various places.

Re: Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

#80

Post by skeeter2020 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

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.

This is really not true with electric, solid-body guitars. The materials play some role, but the down-stream amplification and processing is where the biggest differences occur, combined with the guitar's electronics. Body shape has very little to do with it. Fender basically creates the same-looking guitar at many price points specifically to capitalize on letting everyone buy a "stratocaster". The quality difference is the combined materials, craftsmanship, hardware and electronics.