Yeah, it’s pretty shitty. What I described above has been something that has happened repeatedly in the tech sector for decades.
…and Volvo would have the same problem Fender does now, that because they made no effort to enforce intellectual property rights on the design for the last… probably 50 years for both, that they would have a hard time making a claim stick today.
The biggest difference is that a seatbelt isn’t an aesthetic design or any sort of “branding” whereas the Strat body shape and headstock are. And, Fender has defended the headstock, which is why you see Strat bodies but not Strat headstocks, barring situations like Warmoth where they license the design.
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Exactly. The answer to who designed it does not seem to hold a lot of weight in that context.
…but that gets back to my post above, right? The takeaway for Fender here is that “well, we should have lawyered up 50 years ago,” and I don’t think that’s a scenario where anyone wins.
Which is why I was saying Fender’s… idunno… moral? claim to the Fender body design is a lot stronger than their legal one, and this is sort of a weird situation where Fender is doing something that’s 1) wrong, and 2) legally tenuous… but 3) at the same time the fact that there are a whole bunch of manufacturers ripping off a pretty iconic design of theirs also isn’t a good thing.
And I think if we just focus on the legal merits of Fender’s claim, that kind of falls through the cracks. If anything it points to a borderline deficiency in copyright law (though only borderline in that otherwise this could be a form of patent trolling - if Volvo decided today they wanted to enforce their claim to the seatbelt design, after explicitly telling their competitors they could use it for years, that’s basically just their setting a legal trap. Here Fender didn’t give anyone permission, they just failed to sue anyone before, well, they haven’t sued anyone yet, but they’re now threatening to).
It’s hard to find the right words to say this, exactly… but what Fender is doing is on one hand wrong… but it’s also a little bit right, in that it’s undeniable a whole bunch of people are using one of their designs. It’s a very complicated situation, and that the law is fairly clear here speaks more to issues around how we treat IP protection legally than anything about Fender’s actual intellectual property.
Yes! I can see that.
The philosophical exercise is fascinating and expands way beyond this particular case, especially when it comes to what should count as art, how much time is “early enough” to protect a design, etc. Unfortunately, they started a completely different discussion by opening that legal can of worms and I don’t think it’s doing anybody any favors, not even themselves.
Also, I’m the opposite of an expert but I would have strategized around the moral side of things instead. It sounds like a way easier sale. 
Just shitposting but this isn’t far from what Wizards of the Coast did with the d&d OGL lmao
I’d love to hear this story over a beer sometime.
Yeah, it’s tricky, right? Because you never want to root for the big company going after the little guys… but if the roles were reversed, it might be a lot easier to have sympathy with Fender’s position. Because you look at this:
…and without seeing more of the guitar than that, if you asked a hundred guitarists who made this, I’d expect one hundred of them to tell you that’s a Fender.
So my read is that the main issue with Fender’s stance here is not that they’re doing it, it’s that they didn’t do itr 30-40 years ago… and that’s basically just saying that a legal loophole is stopping them from protecting their IP.
I have a lot of sympathy for pretty much all parties involved, really. It’s a messy situation, and the fact Fender are kind of being dicks about it doesn’t really undercut the fact that they kind of have a point. I just wish they’d gone about it differently.
…now I want a pale blue Strat.
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I think our IP law is far too restrictive. They had their chance! IP expires for a reason. I’d rather go the other way and say “yeah it expires after 30 years and you can’t keep it after that.”
The specific issue though isn’t that their IP expired, it’s that there’s about 30 years’ worth of history with people building Strat knockoffs that Fender must have been aware of, but didn’t sue anyone over. So, from a copyright standpoint, their body design is no longer enforceable because they didn’t lawyer upright off the bat.
Which is a pretty flimsy reason for people to feel good about making Strat knockoffs today… but means legally, they can. And that’s why I’m so ambivalent about all of this.
I guess my question then is this: if we made it easy to pick and choose whom you sue for infringing your IP, would there be negative side effects? If I squint I can kind of see why that would be bad.
I’m wondering, what is a “Strat knock off” and who determines that? That question is relevant because Fender are factually equating a Yamaha Pacifica to a fake Fender Stratocaster from Aliexpress.
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w2b Yamaha Pacifica Pacifica - Kito & Reija Lee Remix - song and lyrics by Spor, Kito, Reija Lee | Spotify
Considering someone on Youtube recently got a copyright claim because they mentioned Htel Califrnia, Yamaha might have a case to dispute the title of that track. Who knows. 
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I think the biggest negative would be the risk of a company knowingly looking the other way for a while, and then, when a company was starting to have some success, one day changing their mind and basically extorting that company.
Admittedly, that’s not far from where we are now. :lol:
God only knows. 
For me, personally I guess whrer if you cover up the headstock nothing about the body gives it away that it’s not a Fender. Full disclosure, I DIDN’T use a picture of an actual stratoaster for the Daphne Blue guitar above… but I seriously considetred it because I don’t think anyone would notice.
IIRC though isn’t their current argument a little different than that? They’re not claiming a Pacifica is a - for lack of a better word - forgery of their product, but rather that it’s stealing artistic design elements. Fender hasn’t had any problem going after fakes purporting to be the real thing, the difference now is they’re trying to claim their design, though if they’re including Pacificas (my first guitar was one) they’re taking a very broad interpretation.
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Yeah the artistic side of it seems to be the claim behind the C&D letters, although this whole thing started with the fake Fender that led to the lawsuit in Germany, and yes, their interpretation of the entire situation seems to be getting broader and broader. I mean, the short of it sounds like “we spotted fake Fenders from overseas, and while we’re at it, all Pacificas, PRS, etc. should (literally) burn.”
Edit: I wonder if Fender has been silently paying Martin a fee for their dreadnought guitars.
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I hope not. I REALLY like my Collings OM and don’t want to open that can of worms.
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Hi there…if anybody that’s not a guitar player look at the picture they will say that’s an electric guitar and not attach the fender name nor the Stratocaster. I think that’s the point.
Actually that shape is included in my WhatsApp whatever to refer to a guitar … I cant imagine anything more generic than that.
Maybe the point is that they don’t know how to compete anymore…
They are selling myth and that might be destroying it right now…because the mid range guitars had quality issues for some time now. And people kept buying it because of the headstock.
EMHO
This is what scares them:
I’m not sure if they really thought people overseas couldn’t produce high-end guitars as if it were a sort of obscure art. Most Chinese manufacturers just didn’t care about that segment of the market until now imho.
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I always kind of thought it was more about business model, less than ability - chinese manufacturing has been focused on low cost scale. Give them a design and exact specs, and they’ll turn around 5,000 of them for you made exactly to those specs; kind of like the half-joke that you can order anything you want on Alibaba, provided its in quantities of at least 500.
What Cruz is talking about here is a very different process than mass production; hand selecting woods, hand rolling neck edges, hand relicing them, etc. This isn’t mass production at all, this is artistry. And I’d be more surprised if Chinese craftsmen were NOT capable of crafting to this degree - I suppose you could make a phiolosophical argument that there’s a capitalism-vs-communism thing at play here and artistry is a fundamentally anti-collectivist act since it’s highly individualistic… but China has been in this weird communist-but-still-capitalist place for a while now so I think individual pursuit and acheivement is maybe more culturally normal than in an economy where your entire upbringing is focused on how you fit in within the social order for the collective good.
But, anyway, this isn’t an assembly line guitar, in the way that Chinese Fender knockoffs are. This is craftsmanship.
(EDIT - and that’s a point worth calling out more explicitly here - Farida kind of validates, rather than threatens, the high end guitar model here; they’re not saying that if you get your tolerances exactly right then an assembly line can churn out thousands of guitars that will all be absolutely killer; rather, they’re saying that if you want that kind of an instrument, you DO need to give it this sort of highly hands on personal attention from an experienced builder. They’re saying Fender is doing it right, but they can hire craftsmen of this stature, too).
Looks like the plan is to sell 60 of these, at about $2k each. On one hand that’s reslly competitive and that’s likely a lot of guitar for your money.
But, on the other, 60 guitars at $2k, you’re looking at total revenue (before expenses) of $120k, and these don’t appear to be high margin. That’s not covering Cruz’s salary, I’d wager. Rather, I think this is a shots-fired move to stake out legitimacy, with the aim of making their other mass produced guitars an established brand.
I still think the out and out fakes are a bigger business risk for Fender than this venture… And, while on one hand, their picking up a well known Fender Custom Shop crafftsman is a coup, it’s also not like Cruz had a lot going on at the time.
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I’m far from an expert but this is how I see it:
I don’t think they really care about what happens with those masterbuilt guitars and the situation is a little more straightforward: they immediately legitimized their entire lineup by associating themselves with the Fender Custom Shop and the 60 fancy guitars sound like a moderate PR investment regardless of whether they’ll be able to sell them because the real moneymaker most frequently is the assembly line. Also, they don’t need to convince the world that John Cruz can build a good Strat but his endorsement sells the idea that they are not the stereotypical low-quality dropshipping sweatshop. Moreover, they don’t really need Cruz to establish the standards and attention to detail they are starting to follow as that’s literally how overseas mid-tier companies like Sire and Eastman (the latter a little higher-end) operate (although they also needed Marcus Miller and Larry Carlton as fancy names to legitimize their brand).
Similarly, on the Fender side, the real threat is not on the custom shop because the lifestyle status of the brand will probably last forever. Instead, the fight is happening at the lower tiers where the profit margins are bigger, which has led them to invest more in the Mexican catalog (nitro-finished Charvels!) as well as the Indonesian Standard line. The dilemma is that “improved overseas manufacturer with a Custom Shop” sounds a lot cooler than “Indonesian Fender.” Finally, I don’t think the competition’s argument has ever been that Fender == bad rather than (brand) == good/better.
PS: Fuck all knock-offs and fuck scammers too.