Yeah seems crazy. New CEO looking to make friends with everyone, clearly
It’s like Gibson, one must protect their IP.
In the Germany case? sure, that was a fake Fender.
Their twisted narrative that everybody who’s ever built a Strat should destroy them? That’s like 70 years too late.
Different context, of course, but this kinda feels like Volvo forcing everybody to destroy every non-Volvo car with a seatbelt.
That’s not how I understand it
I think it’s exactly like Gibson but also fuck Gibson 
I concluded that Gibson is actually pretty awesome because they invented the V as well as the Explorer. The problem with most guitar companies is that they don’t really invent anything; I wish that they would be more imaginative versus merely copying Fender Stratocasters.
Exactly how I feel about it. It’s retro license mafia like.
Yeah, they didn’t invent the stratocaster or anything derivative like that. Gibson does original things, like buying the Les Paul and buying (and effectively shutting down) Steinberger!
The only brands that come to mind from that statement alone are Fender and, well, Gibson.
Ned is incredible. I also was really impressed by Ken Parker (with his Fly guitars). Jens Ritter is incredible… there is a lot of talent out there doing really cool things.
I expected this chat threat to fire until nothing but ashes…
It is not, it is kind of cool… 
This whole case stinks of Patent Trolling, basically a protection racket.
I’m pretty sure that Fender’s goal here isn’t to get any other manufacturers to stop producing strat and tele type bodies. The goal here will be to scare other manufacturers, particularly the smaller ones that can’t afford to fight a company as big as Fender in court, to sign agreements to give Fender a cut of their revenue in exchange for not being sued. This has been a common tactic go generate new revenue streams in the tech sector for a while.
And, honestly, this isn’t even necessarily an unfair outcome or, depending on what licensing looks like, one I’d imagine there would be a ton of pushback to from some of the impacted builders.
We can nitpick copyright law and intellectual property and whatnot, but at the end of the day, when we see a Strat body, we all know what we’re looking at. If Fender approached a builder and said, “hey, you can use our body shape if you license it from us for $50 a body, you can’t use our headstock though, but we’ll license you that as well for another $250,” I think we’d suddenly see a whole lot more Strat headstock copies on the market than we have today.
I do think a lot of the backlash Fender is seeing is related to their methods, and not anything at all about whether or not their headstock and body shapes are recognizably “Fender” designs.
Their methods are clearly awful but the thing is that those body shapes are public domain in the US and Japan. Why would any company pay for that?
Because one has to pay money to defend themselves from Fender even if they would eventually prevail in court. For larger companies it would be a financial inconvenience, but or smaller companies it can be devastating.
As a hypothetical example, let’s pretend that Fender goes after Anderson Guitarworks. One of the first things they do in court is make a motion for a temporary injunction restraining Anderson Guitarworks from completing any existing orders or accepting any money for new orders until the trademark issue is decided in court. Their lawyers prepared for this by coming up with an argument that, while unlikely to stand up in an actual trial, is novel enough to require arguments to be heard and a judge to take time to rule on whether or not the suit can proceed. Since it is a federal suit they also have made sure to venue shop and file the suit in the district most likely to have the judge issue the temporary injunction. Once the injunction is issued and Anderson has to basically stop most of their business until the judge rules, Fender’s lawyers to everything they can to drag out the trial as long as possible to maximize the financial pain for Anderson.
While this is going on, Fender uses every media connection they have to make sure the trial is public knowledge and that the industry knows just how much financial pain Anderson is in as the lawsuit cuts off Anderson’s revenue. In preparation Fender’s lawyers have made a list of what manufacturers that produce strat or tele style guitars would suffer the most from being the victim of such an injunction and send them cease and desist letters coupled with an offer to sign a licensing agreement that protects them from the risk of Fender suing them. These licensing agreements have two key features:
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They are legally binding regardless of what courts rule about Fender’s trademarks. This means that even if there is a court ruling saying that any company can use Fender’s body shapes however they want, any company that signed the licensing agreement is still obligated to pay Fender a licensing fee.
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They are binding either in perpetuity or for many years. This means that once signed the company is stuck with it.
Basically Fender spends the money on a trial that they know they can’t ultimately win because the goal is not to win in court, the goal is to create a situation where they can basically set up a protection racket. They go to all these companies and say “Look, either you can pay us a small share of every guitar you sell or we are going to do to you what we did to Anderson. Even if we can’t win in court we can cut off your revenue long enough to bankrupt you. Which will it be?”
To finish the whole bit, after the injunction has lasted long enough that it made the risk of going out of business a very real prospect for Anderson but before the judge has issued a ruling on Fender’s argument, they give Anderson a no-brainer settlement offer with a number of gag order clauses. This way there is no legal ruling that prevents Fender from doing the whole thing over again with other manufacturers. This means that every time a new boutique luthier enters the market Fender can threaten them with and get another licensee.
Thank you for the detailed walkthrough. If that’s the case, their bullying is even worse than I could have imagined.
I think to really do this question justice it’d take a lot more typing than I have the heart for, lol.
But the argument they’re “public domain” rests primarily on the fact Fender didn’t aggressively pursue copyright claims early on. Which, they probably should have… but that’s neither here nor there.
The legal argument, by the book, that a “strat style body” isn’t subject to IP protection is probably stronger than the IP protection arguments they’re now using. No arguments there. But, if you take a step back, IS the Strat body shape Fender’s IP? Regardless of enforceability? I think its harder to answer that in the negative. I know you have VERY strong feelings about Fender being in the wrong here, but I also think it’s pretty clear that the Strat IS a Fender design, which adds some nuance here.
End of the day, I don’t think “Well, Fender’s lawyers should have just been more aggressive earlier on” is the sort of answer that is going to make anyone - who isn’t a lawyer themselves - feel good about the scenario.
I don’t think anybody is disputing that Fender designed the Strat and Tele bodies so that seems besides the point. Instead, just imagine if Geely (current owners of Volvo) somehow decided to reclaim the seatbelt as a work of art because the inventor was inspired by his mom’s favorite belt. That’s Fender’s entire argument.