91–100 of 137 posts
Is it even legal to wait that long? Can anyone change their minds after decades of looking away? Customary law (esp. in Germany) might disagree with that ruling?
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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.
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.
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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.
> So why not license the shape then? Because - until it makes its way through the courts - it’s not established that Fender has the rights to claim ownership of on the shape in the first place. In the US, there’s three routes for that - design patent, trade dress and artistic copyright. AFAIK they don’t have a design patent. Trade dress is hard to prove association - would most people on the street say “yep, that’s 1…
The shape might not be purely functional—and that seems to be the basis for their attempted lawsuit.
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Because two things look the same, even identical, does not mean one copied the other. These are useful, practical, objects. A honda and a toyota me be virtually identical (same size, weight, door, number of wheels etc) but nobody would call them copies. And if they did, they are both copies of an ancient, out-of-copyright, merc rather than each other.
I am with you. I believe this is a matter of degree vs kind. Can you see how there are truly many instruments which deliberately mimic details of the Fender designs, and not the broad solid-body guitar design principles? I brought this up in the earlier post: I think the difference is most clear when looking at companies that have both their own designs, and Fender-style designs. Cosmetic and arbitrary features are m…
Solar Guitars has a category called "S", but despite having the general shape of a Strato, the similarities end there. And they are not being threatened.
This is not "all cars have 4 wheels". This is "lets make an exact copy of a Ferrari painted in Ferrari red, that even seasoned car enthusiast would have a hard time to tell appart from a Ferrari". That said, trademarking a guitar shape that they forgot to trademark a century ago is a bad move.
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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…
Yeah, really cheap guitars (like $150 cheap) can be great but they also can be terrible due to non existent QC and electronics and hardware being the cheapest available because every cent matters.
But as soon as you hit a price point where QC exists a lot of reasonably priced instruments just need a proper setup and better electronics (not the pickups, but pots, wiring and shielding, the cheapest mods that you can do in a guitar or bass) to feel like a professional instrument that you can use in any situation.
And you are dead on on yamahas, if you play a pacifica you can be sure that almost every single pacifica of the same model will feel very closer, yamaha consistency and QC is amazing at their price point.
Can someone explain what the actual legal basis for this is? The shape of the guitar is very old (75+ years) and has been extensively copied before, so one would assume that patents and trademarks would not cover it.
> The shape of the guitar is very old (75+ years) They are basing their claims on copyright[1], which is longer than 75+ years[2]. The first case they filed (in Germany, against a Chinese manufacturer) "validated" their copyright claims because the Chinese manufacturer did not turn up to court so the court ruled in Fender's favor in a default judgment. The small companies being sued could still fight Fender in court…
I think "BigCo abusing the courts" — or alternately, "courts are designed to facilitate abuse by the wealthy" — is the essence of this story.
The case is dicey at best on the legal merits. It also offends community sentiments because it's a rugpull against businesses who wouldn't be copying if the design had been defended from the start.
But none of that matters because Fender can exhaust the resources of the companies it's targeting. All that matters is who can pay their lawyers the longest in a war of attrition.
Rock 'n' Roll has died many deaths. I suppose this is just one more, but it still hurts.
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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…
> It is also interesting that MusicMan (Another Fender company!) has gone differently; still some of the most recognizable designs, but they have been selling officially licensed versions instead to capture the lower end. (SUB, OLP, Sterling etc), and don't have the copycats of the Fender models. That's basically what Fender does with Squier. Arguably they invented that move back in the 80s. I think it's more of a ca…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Above like $500, they all play pretty much the same Yeah, really cheap guitars (like $150 cheap) can be great but they also can be terrible due to non existent QC and electronics and hardware being the cheapest available because every cent matters. But as soon as you hit a price point where QC exists a lot of reasonably priced instruments just need a proper setup and better electronics (not the pickups, but pots, w…
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.
I've had great experiences with them.
It's basically $500 guitars sold for half or even a third of the price, probably made at the same factories that Fender makes their new line in Indonesia.
My $1500 Gibson Les Paul DC Junior is full of problems compared to its $150 Harley Benton DC Jr counterpart. The Gibson pickup covers are WAY too high for the bridge, the Gibson pickguard feels ultra-cheap compared to the Harley Benton, Gibson finish is acceptable but the cheap one is satin and just feels better... Weighs the same, sounds the same. Just a 10x difference. Oh well.