alt.hn

5/19/2026 at 5:28:30 AM

Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

 https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/electric-guitars/fender-cease-and-desist-lsl-instruments

by rectang

5/21/2026 at 1:56:45 PM

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 Guitars, Seuf, Shabat, LsL, Mario Martin, etc.

If Fender gets the industry to capitulate and abandon its shapes, there's a very real chance it does long-term reputational damage to the brand. Not due to lawsuit outrage but due to something much simpler: consumers and musicians no longer associating new production S-style guitars as great electric guitars. Today, the boutique builders Fender is suing do quite a bit to uphold the reputation of those shapes. Without them they're just designs of a legacy brand that mostly sells mid-market import guitars.

[1] That possible exception are Masterbuilt-tier instruments made by Fender's Custom Shop https://www.fender.com/pages/custom-shop The wait time is several months and the price starts around $8K USD and quickly pushes into 5 figures.

by spamizbad

5/21/2026 at 2:18:31 PM

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.

by plasticsoprano

5/21/2026 at 2:39:45 PM

> 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 100% a Stratocaster” if they say the outline? Probably not. The shape isn’t separate from the functionality so artistic copyright hasn’t upheld either. The fact that Fender has not successfully enforced copyright concerns for over 70 years is also a sign that they never had IP protection on the shape.

by rhplus

5/21/2026 at 3:40:21 PM

In the US, I'm pretty sure they have no protection. They lost a US case to establish a trademark in 2009 [1] (2009 article title says copyright, but text is about a trademark suit). A design patent would have expired, unless it was filed in 1954 and was pending until recently or is still pending... US patents filed before 1995 don't start their validity period until issuance, but that'd be a big stretch.

It's possible there's a US copyright claim, but on a 1954 design, you would have to have registered it, marked the works with the copyright (on at least most of the copies), and timely renewed. There's also, IMHO, a solid question of if US copyright applies to the shape of a guitar. If they had a strong case, I think they would have tried to enforce on it in 2009 when they tried to enforce on trademark.

[1] https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/fender-loses-guitar-...

by toast0

5/21/2026 at 5:18:37 PM

There’s a story, possibly apocryphal, that the first electric guitar demo was a bunch of strings nailed to some basic lumber and it received a negative reception. The designer went home, tore apart his acoustic guitar and mounted the electronics inside. The sound was not changed by this. The critical reception however was much improved. And the rest is history.

The shape might not be purely functional—and that seems to be the basis for their attempted lawsuit.

by manwe150

5/21/2026 at 4:26:45 PM

well, in the US, those shapes were ruled public domain.

in Germany, Fender recently won a default ruling because a chinese counterfeiter didn't even show up in court, and they're now using that to go after anyone selling in the EU, even though that's not really what that case win means. But private equity is going to private equity.

by dkuntz2

5/21/2026 at 2:54:54 PM

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.

by spamizbad

5/21/2026 at 5:08:10 PM

They'd have to do something more complex like licensing the shape + name at the same time, since they do own "Stratocaster". Not sure how big of a demand there is for the name though, or if Fender was even interested in licensing that part.

by Hamuko

5/19/2026 at 5:37:11 AM

If a guitar company were attempting to enforce IP rights on a new design instead of one from 75 years ago with a decades-old cottage industry of copycats large and small, this would be a different story.

Small builders like LsL have the community’s sympathy. They don’t have the resources to fight a legal battle against the world’s largest guitar company.

by rectang

5/21/2026 at 11:44:43 AM

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 effectively clones, and look (at a glance) identical other than the name on the headstock. Sometimes they are fancy ones built to a higher quality than the original, but superficially look like clones.

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.

by the__alchemist

5/21/2026 at 11:54:38 AM

Maybe someone new to music and guitar would mistake them for the real thing, but these copies have different hand styles and they have neither the Stratocaster nor the fender logo. This is a non-issue.

The actual problem lies within fender itself. Not only it's aggressively protecting a old design, fender itself is guilty of being misleading when it splits its product line into multiple brands that's often confusing for the consumer: fender squire, squire by fender, the regular one, fender custom shop, American vintage etc... which is only discernible by the price.

by gchamonlive

5/21/2026 at 12:02:21 PM

The problem is some PE has read up on the FujiGen Gakki guitars of the 70s and thought they could strike rich with a test case in a soft German court - and they were right.

by piltdownman

5/21/2026 at 1:24:29 PM

I just finished restoring the Univox Coily that was sitting in my parents' basement for the past 25 years. Every time I step into the room and see it I do a double take because it looks so cool. (It sounds pretty great, too, especially through my Kay 703, aka the widowmaker.)

by bobchadwick

5/21/2026 at 4:29:32 PM

it's yet to be proven that they are right, the only thing they won in the german court is a default ruling because they picked a defendant who they knew wasn't going to show up so they could get a default ruling. The actual merits of the case have yet to be tried.

by dkuntz2

5/21/2026 at 11:58:48 AM

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.

by piltdownman

5/21/2026 at 1:09:38 PM

> Guitars are not about aesthetics

My wife used to work at Acoustic Guitar magazine. She said the most common sales line to sell a guitar at Guitar Center was "it looks good on you". The sound of guitars might not be aesthetics, but in regards to sales, it most certainly is. Everyone plays the same guitars because they grew up seeing their idols play those guitars.

by snide

5/21/2026 at 2:23:08 PM

Yeah, I'd say guitars are heavily based on aesthetics, but not entirely. One of the reasons why I switched from a Les Paul, which was the guitar shape I loved the most before I started playing, to a Stratocaster was that the Stratocaster was just that much more comfortable. The LP body is basically just a block of wood with a cutout for your hand in comparison to the contoured body of the Stratocaster. If I had to buy an LP-style guitar again, I'd want at least a belly cut on it.

by Hamuko

5/21/2026 at 3:12:08 PM

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.

by skeeter2020

5/21/2026 at 1:24:55 PM

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. :)

by liveoneggs

5/21/2026 at 1:26:18 PM

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

by bobchadwick

5/21/2026 at 1:56:15 PM

> they have been selling officially licensed versions instead to capture the lower end

That's a huge difference though. Copycats are not licensed versions. Licensing usually involves fees but also an agreement of what can and cannot be done. Copycats do none of that and just do what they want.

Fender does seem late to the party with this and it really does feel like not offering a license instead of trying to kill off the copy cats after taking no action for such a long time is just patent troll level nonsense.

by dylan604

5/21/2026 at 11:56:31 AM

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.

by sandworm101

5/21/2026 at 1:03:19 PM

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 mimicked, like pick guard design, precise pickup style and position, control layout etc.

by the__alchemist

5/21/2026 at 5:32:24 PM

When I first read this, I thought Fender was after anything S-shaped, like the superstrats that makes Ibanez. Then I went to some of the makers, like LSL, and they are making not just strato-shaped guitars but almost exact copies including the same style brigde-vibrato (when everyone is building with Evertune or Floyd), the same single coil pickups, the same knobs, the same cable socket in the front, same pickguard, same dot fret markers, same neck insertion (when everybody is using better methods for top models). They paint the guitars mimicking Fender colour schemes and even painted as aged Fenders.

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.

by otherme123

5/21/2026 at 1:10:15 PM

> 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 case of the whole market going stale. The biggest driver of guitar sales, rock music, is still relevant but not the primary driver of culture that it once was. You can only increase the playability of a guitar so much. In a lot of ways, it's a commodity now, and the owners of Fender - some investment firm - are trying to make good on their bet by either ignoring that fact or trying to make them not a commodity again.

by lenerdenator

5/21/2026 at 11:54:34 AM

Leo Fender could have protected the body design just like he did with the headstock, but he didn't. Pursuing this now, especially against a small maker, feels hostile and could backfire on them. I hope it does.

by criddell

5/21/2026 at 12:23:50 PM

Leo also copied his own designs later on after he sold Fender and started other guitar companies. For example the G&L ASAT looks pretty much exactly like a Fender Telecaster.

by Hamuko

5/21/2026 at 1:11:39 PM

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 that's moved entirely by emotion. For sure they know this. Doing it secures their ownership over a bigger piece of IP than they previously had a fair claim to - not just the Stratocaster name, but the shape too. That might the brand more valuable in a sale.

by scrumper

5/21/2026 at 1:39:50 PM

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.

by ricardobayes

5/21/2026 at 1:58:54 PM

This was already litigated decades ago in the USA, fender trademarked the headstock and lost in on the body. The bodies have been copied for 60ish years already, basically as long as they existed. Fender tried to trademark body shapes decades after and they lost on appeal in 2009.

A barely related ruling in the EU which has very different copyright and trademark law is being used as the basis for this suit.

by ses1984

5/21/2026 at 3:05:56 PM

>> 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!)

by skeeter2020

5/21/2026 at 2:22:09 PM

This isn’t a trademark case.

by skywhopper

5/21/2026 at 2:03:26 PM

Yes. However, they are not suing based on a trademark, they are suing based on having copyright on the shape of the body.

by nikanj

5/21/2026 at 1:49:25 PM

A quick browse of Sweetwater shows 689 different s-style body guitars, four of which are made by Fender under the Squier label. The other 685 different varients are made by companies that I'm not immediately identifying as Fender or Fender-owned. Anecdotally, that doesn't seem significantly different from the status quo I remember 10-15 years ago when I was actively guitar shopping. The body style has been widely used and generic for decades.

by CocaKoala

5/21/2026 at 1:45:32 PM

From my cursory search, it just looks like they have a stock ownership position in Roland, not any real say in how Roland is ran. Kinda like how Game Stop has a position with eBay.

by oidar

5/21/2026 at 1:14:43 PM

Legal questions (none of which are answered by a default judgement):

a) Is the shape of a guitar even a valid copyright claim?

b) If so, Stratocasters were first 'published' when you had to follow forms to get copyright in the US. Where those forms followed? I don't see a copyright notice on this very early example [1] which is claimed to be original.

c) Copyrights generally don't have an enforce it or lose it requirement, but is there an impact on enforcability from the very long time that similar guitars have been available in the marketplace with no apparent enforcement?

d) added in edit. There's probably an international copyright question, too. Was the guitar 'published simultaneously' in a Berne member state as well as the US (which was not a member in 1954)? If so, Berne minimums apply, if the work is copyrightable, in member states (other than the US), otherwise, probably country by country?

[1] https://wellstrungguitars.com/guitar/stratocaster-sunburst-2...

by toast0

5/21/2026 at 11:51:41 AM

> According to Fender, the outcome of the case – launched against a Chinese manufacturer – gave the firm the legal right to “protect its designs in global commerce”.

So they used China scare as a trojan horse to sue other US manufacturers? There's some delicious irony in that.

by cassianoleal

5/21/2026 at 11:55:00 AM

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

by criddell

5/21/2026 at 1:09:11 PM

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

by jpfromlondon

5/21/2026 at 4:36:05 PM

There certainly could be collusion. But it could just as easily be a Chinese music instrument storefront has little reason to show up in court. Worst case, they setup a new name when shipments start getting confiscated. Losing a few cheap guitars at customs and restarting SEO is probably cheaper than foreign lawyers. The storefront in question [1] (assuming there's not a name collision) lists a lot of stuff, more effort than I would put in on a sockpuppet store; it does have a nice name, but it's only been on Aliexpress for two years, so not a lot of brand legacy to throw away if need be.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1103599226

by toast0

5/21/2026 at 2:45:16 PM

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

by BJones12

5/21/2026 at 3:28:33 PM

There are, making such a conspiracy all the easier to perpetrate.

by jpfromlondon

5/21/2026 at 4:32:13 PM

suing US manufacturers who sell in the EU, because they can't sue someone for selling a strat shaped guitar in the US, the shape was declared public domain in the US twenty years ago

by dkuntz2

5/21/2026 at 1:24:55 PM

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”.

by shrubble

5/21/2026 at 1:27:46 PM

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.

by throwatdem12311

5/21/2026 at 2:44:33 PM

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.

by bityard

5/21/2026 at 2:53:25 PM

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.

by coldpie

5/21/2026 at 6:34:55 PM

> 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, 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.

by thomasfortes

5/21/2026 at 12:07:56 PM

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

by ofrzeta

5/21/2026 at 12:27:17 PM

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

by ablation

5/21/2026 at 1:25:24 PM

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

by criddell

5/21/2026 at 4:34:54 PM

Oh, a bit late to sue the company I got my Strat-clone ~28 years ago. In Germany. They don't even exist anymore. :-)

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?

by GuestFAUniverse

5/21/2026 at 11:50:53 AM

on the one hand this sucks on the other hand let a thousand schools of steinberger/strandberg-style weirdness bloom

by tensegrist

5/21/2026 at 1:41:20 PM

I think Fender are idiots for doing this but I also wonder why companies copy the body style so slavishly. You would think makers of musical instruments would be a little more creative themselves.

by criddell

5/21/2026 at 1:55:26 PM

It's a pretty restrictive design space. The Stratocaster shape is based on the centuries-old shape of acoustic guitars. The lower dip of the "hip" of the guitar shape serves a practical purpose, in allowing it to rest on your leg when playing seated. The upper dip mirrors the lower hip aesthetically and removes weight. The cutaways in the upper bout allows you to access the higher frets. At that point there's not a whole lot of design variation left without sacrificing some functionality (eg the Flying V shape is not really playable while seated), and honestly most of that design space has already been explored, too. The strat shape is so common because, well, it's a really good and obvious design for an electric guitar, which is why it was one of the very first. If you stray very far from one of the handful of established designs, you pretty much just end up with a worse guitar.

by coldpie

5/21/2026 at 4:22:10 PM

Upvoted because you've captured the overall point pretty well, but I will say that the Flying V can be pretty dang comfortable seated if you hold in the classical position (i.e., resting on your fretting side thigh). I almost always play standing anyway, but when I do sit, I usually rest the guitar (acoustic or electric) on my left leg anyway because I find it more comfortable.

As with most things guitar, it's mostly about what works for the individual player.

by Sindisil

5/21/2026 at 4:34:51 PM

This is why the materials from Fender keep trying to emphasize that the strat shape was an explicitly creative decision and not a functional one, because if it's primarily a functional design, they've got nothing (see how there's only so many ways to design a shovel, you can't sue someone for copying your shovel design)

by dkuntz2

5/21/2026 at 3:22:34 PM

It's the same reason why bikes all look the same. There's only so many ways to design around a set of constraints.

by lbreakjai

5/21/2026 at 12:54:33 PM

I guess Steinberger guitars are protected by some branding too, also Steinberger seems to own some patents (maybe the headless/bridge combo?). No idea if they are still valid.

by ofrzeta

5/21/2026 at 12:13:33 PM

Agreed. I personally don't like the S-shaped ones. But ended up buying one cos there was none else in the store.

by RaSoJo

5/21/2026 at 12:45:49 PM

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.

by rwmj

5/21/2026 at 1:12:08 PM

> 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 and overturn that default judgment, but court cases are expensive and Fender is massive. It's Fender abusing the courts to bully their competition.

[1] "The Dusseldorf court deemed that the Stratocaster design qualified as a copyrighted work of applied art under German and European law, thus prohibiting Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co. from manufacturing, offering or distributing guitars featuring the Stratocaster body shape in Germany and the EU." https://www.guitarworld.com/music-industry/fender-legal-ruli...

[2] "The chosen term for a work was 70 years from the death of the author." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_... Leo Fender passed in 1991, so any copyrights attributable to him expire in the year 2061 (ie another 35 years from now, more than 100 years after the first strats were sold). I'm not 100% sure this is the copyright situation Fender asserted, but it's probably something not very far off from this. If you think this copyright duration is absolutely ludicrous, you are correct.

by coldpie

5/21/2026 at 6:57:03 PM

> It's Fender abusing the courts

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.

by rectang

5/21/2026 at 2:19:46 PM

Patents and trademarks would not cover it, but fortunately this case was about copyright.

by nikanj

5/21/2026 at 12:49:14 PM

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

by boxed

5/21/2026 at 1:03:48 PM

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 before 1978. I doubt the copyright laws back then would have even allowed copyrighting the shape like that (but I'm not a lawyer). If they can show they registered the copyright correctly under the old laws they would have a copyright case since copyright applies even if they are generic.

Also, since the shape has functional aspects (see others), patents would be the correct protection, but the important patents (if any) have expired long ago. You can still patent something today if you make a variation of the shape - but it would be trivial for anyone to work around that patent since the main design is free of patents and a very specific minor change from the common shape it patentable.

by bluGill

5/21/2026 at 1:31:31 PM

> 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.

by coldpie

5/21/2026 at 3:10:35 PM

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.

by bluGill

5/21/2026 at 12:56:04 PM

They have to be actively fought for the entire time you own the rights to the trademark though, that doesn't seem to the be the case.

by hilariously

5/21/2026 at 1:22:51 PM

Trademarks are a fundamentally different kind of IP.

With copyright and patent, the creator of the work is being protected. But with trademark law, it's not about protecting the content of the IP as such. It's about protecting the consumer from being misled into thinking they're getting the real thing.

And given the guitar market at large, with about ten thousand different guitars in the general shape of a Strat, it's pretty much universally known that the name on the headstock is what you have to look at to differentiate. So long as that name isn't misleading, I have a hard time imagining how they could make a case of it.

I mean, if the headstock says "Fernando Stratoblaster" or something, then MAYBE it's a little confusing. But my guitar, a Kramer Focus 6000 looked very nearly identical to a Strat (the edges are less beveled, the headstock is pointier, but at a quick glance...), but it quite clearly says that it's NOT a strat. Nobody's going to be fooled despite the striking similarity in shape.

by CWuestefeld

5/21/2026 at 12:51:45 PM

how is guitar shape a trademark?

edit: thanks for the responses!

by ulbu

5/21/2026 at 1:05:01 PM

You can trademark any shape. However by not protecting their trademark over the years (if they every had one - which I doubt) they lost it.

by bluGill

5/21/2026 at 1:09:24 PM

Design rights[1] are a thing. However they need to be continuously defended. You can't let competitors make your designs (without license) for decades and then suddenly turn around and try to enforce the right, as seems to be the case here. Plus in the EU there are overall limits, apparently 25 years.

This is why I'm asking what the legal basis is for this case. It seems unlikely to be legally sound. Probably the German court made a mistake, and the company being sued should ignore Fender. (Not legal advice!)

Edit: Someone else just posted that Fender is now owned by private equity, so it's the usual PE playbook. A sad end to a famous brand.

Edit#2: Seems like the German court ruling was a default judgement because the other party failed to show up. So nothing to see here. Fender has no realistic case.

[1] In the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_design

by rwmj

5/21/2026 at 1:16:57 PM

It can be. But in this case they haven't defended such a case for decades, so it seems a court should throw that argument out.

by boxed

5/21/2026 at 12:32:31 PM

I’m always fascinated when companies in industries with extremely passionate customer bases make moves like this when if you just thought it through the probable timeline you would expect them to tread much more lightly. But that’s what you get with management that is out of touch with their customers and industry and only focused on short term numbers. Rather telling of the leadership of Fender than anything else

by Aboutplants

5/21/2026 at 1:31:35 PM

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

by myself248

5/21/2026 at 1:38:41 PM

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.

by coldpie

5/21/2026 at 1:59:10 PM

Thank you, yes, that's exactly the detail I was missing! It's a euphemism for a word that starts with an S, not at all related to the typographical form of the letter S.

Alright, my Trogdor-shaped guitar might happen after all...

by myself248

5/21/2026 at 1:35:09 PM

S = Stratocaster

by criddell

5/21/2026 at 2:46:29 PM

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.

by 827a

5/21/2026 at 3:36:58 PM

Except the design was never copyrighted. It was created at a time when you had to register with the copyright office, which they didn't do. This is just an attempted money grab.

by amanaplanacanal

5/21/2026 at 12:06:58 PM

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

by zkanda

5/21/2026 at 12:23:09 PM

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.

by whynotmaybe

5/21/2026 at 1:38:24 PM

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.

by criddell

5/21/2026 at 1:23:25 PM

You can make the best product, or hire the best lawyers. If you've slipped on product quality relative to the competition, the lawyer option starts to look really good.

by btilly

5/21/2026 at 1:54:34 PM

The body has literally 0 effect on the sound of an electric guitar. Only the pickups matter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE

by tiahura

5/21/2026 at 3:11:08 PM

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.

by bityard

5/21/2026 at 4:07:17 PM

If you only care about the sound, according to a single youtuber.

Other things one might care about:

- Ergonomics: weight, balance, shape of the neck & body, finishes all affect the feel of playing the guitar

- Build quality: Reliability, stability of the wood, ease of setup

- Durability: Quality of finishes, quality of assembly

- Aesthetics

by InitialLastName

5/21/2026 at 2:22:12 PM

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

by nikanj

5/21/2026 at 2:43:51 PM

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/

by coldpie

5/21/2026 at 12:24:23 PM

Fender is dead.

this is a cringe attempt by people holding "legal rights" to something so far gone in history and precident to be just an embarassment and likely criminal persecution of ordinary crafts people building guitars.

If ,whatever hidden legal entity that controls the trade marks, was smart, they would be begging the best indipendent makers to colaberate in making true masterpiece guitars under just that idea, "custom made FOR fender" by person X, paying them a premium, and then re selling to the world market for whatever they can get.

by metalman

5/21/2026 at 1:20:31 PM

Yeah, but that would be real work for someone who loves and understands guitars.

Being a serial patent/trademark troll is the private equity company's bread and butter.

by rwmj

5/21/2026 at 2:01:19 PM

Here we go again: as ever, intellectual property law creates a net loss to society.

by marssaxman