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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 yo

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 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.

plasticsoprano 4mo ago
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.
- rhplus 4mo ago
  > 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.
  - toast0 4mo ago
    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-copyright-case-201886 https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/fender-loses-guitar-...
  - manwe150 4mo ago
    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.
    - shermantanktop 4mo ago
      It’s a true story, and it’s about Les Paul and “the log.” https://guitar.com/features/opinion-analysis/how-les-pauls-log-guitar-changed-everything/ https://guitar.com/features/opinion-analysis/how-les-pauls-l...
      - jen20 4mo ago
        The "log" (generally dated to 1941) is the railroad sleeper ("tie" for Americans?) with wings made in the Epiphone factory in Manhattan attached to the side, and is in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. This is the guitar that Gibson turned down until Fender and Bigsby (via Merle Travis) popularized the solid body guitar. The predecessor was a single string on a piece of actual rail and two spikes, amplified by a telephone receiver in the mid-late 1920s.
- spamizbad 4mo ago
  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.
- dkuntz2 4mo ago
  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.
- Hamuko 4mo ago
  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.
wk_end 4mo ago
I disagree completely with the idea that people only still think of Fender-style guitars as good because of boutique builders. Not that I disagree with the premise that boutique builders are making better guitars for better prices. But rich engineers and lawyers play boutique guitars - almost everyone else, including most professional musicians, still play Fenders (or one of the other big mainstream brands). Fender and even Squier workmanship is fine. Their fundamental designs are both good and iconic. In truth, most guitars on the market these days are pretty good and people mostly just choose the one that makes them feel cool and part of a musical community and lineage. So people would continue to gravitate towards Fender-style guitars for literal generations, as long as guitarists revere the legion of Fender players before them. I say “would” because the damage here is IMO reputational. It doesn’t matter how much guitarists revere Hendrix, Gilmour, Clapton, and a zillion other legendary Strat players if enough word gets around that Fender guitars are made by assholes. They’ll stop making people feel cool. Corporate lawfare is extremely not rock ‘n’ roll.
- 4d4m 4mo ago
  I agree with you due to cnc and production being relatively standardized
- hmmokidk 4mo ago
  I don’t think this is true. I think it’s a beginner musician attitude (due to branding) but musicians often grow out of it. I would never get a fender for quality / value reasons. Some of them look cool; which may be why they want to sue. But the quality of the instrument and the sound is too important to me personally. To me 3K is the most i’ve paid for an instrument, and I gig with two <600$ guitars.
  - nickserv 4mo ago
    I think you're both right. Marketing is very effective, and lots of people are willing to pay a little bit more for a particular brand. On the other hand there's also lots of people who will look for the best value for the money, or want to support smaller luthiers. As you mentioned usually with experience one gravitates towards the second group, but most instrument purchases is entry level gear for beginners. Disclaimer: coming from classical guitar world, but have noticed largely the same pattern, eg someone paying more for an Alhambra when a regional luthier will be less. Not that Alhambra is a bad brand, just that those marketing salaries have to come from somewhere!
wyclif 4mo ago
Fender has cannibalized their brand, just like Ray-Ban and many other manufacturers known for a "classic" design. But what's changed recently is that now they're not just feeling the competition from premium-priced guitars; they're getting squeezed from the low end, sub-$1K part of the market coming from China and Indonesia. Recently I played a Chinese made Telecaster copy that was better in terms of quality and playability than any sub-Masterbuilt Fender. The fit, finish, and fretwork were all dramatically better than any Fender I've played (Fender also manufactures guitars in China and Indonesia). I'm a huge fan of the Esquire, Telecaster, and Stratocaster. It's a shame to see a once-great American brand get cooked by resorting to lawfare instead of QC.
- jen20 4mo ago
  > they're getting squeezed from the low end, sub-$1K part of the market coming from China and Indonesia. This was true in the 80s with Japanese competition as well (the last time Fender tried putting the body shapes back in the box) - Tokei and friends were making vastly better guitars than even the American Fender production at that point. The way Fender survived was by buying the top producers and forming Squier guitars as their entry level. > It's a shame to see a once-great American brand get cooked by resorting to lawfare instead of QC. They did this in the past too, largely over the headstock shape. My "main" Stratocaster-type guitars (despite owning several genuine Fenders of different vintages) are a pair of Levinson Blade R4s - one has the Fender-shape headstock and the other has a modified version from after Levinson got sued in the 90s.
Leherenn 4mo ago
Is there any specific technical value in the shape, or is it just iconic and there are plenty of other just as good shapes?

plasticsoprano 4mo ago

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.

rhplus 4mo ago
> 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.
- toast0 4mo ago
  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-copyright-case-201886 https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/fender-loses-guitar-...
- manwe150 4mo ago
  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.
  - shermantanktop 4mo ago
    It’s a true story, and it’s about Les Paul and “the log.” https://guitar.com/features/opinion-analysis/how-les-pauls-log-guitar-changed-everything/ https://guitar.com/features/opinion-analysis/how-les-pauls-l...
    - jen20 4mo ago
      The "log" (generally dated to 1941) is the railroad sleeper ("tie" for Americans?) with wings made in the Epiphone factory in Manhattan attached to the side, and is in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. This is the guitar that Gibson turned down until Fender and Bigsby (via Merle Travis) popularized the solid body guitar. The predecessor was a single string on a piece of actual rail and two spikes, amplified by a telephone receiver in the mid-late 1920s.
spamizbad 4mo ago
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.
dkuntz2 4mo ago
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.
Hamuko 4mo ago
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.

wk_end 4mo ago

I disagree completely with the idea that people only still think of Fender-style guitars as good because of boutique builders. Not that I disagree with the premise that boutique builders are making better guitars for better prices. But rich engineers and lawyers play boutique guitars - almost everyone else, including most professional musicians, still play Fenders (or one of the other big mainstream brands). Fender and even Squier workmanship is fine. Their fundamental designs are both good and iconic. In truth, most guitars on the market these days are pretty good and people mostly just choose the one that makes them feel cool and part of a musical community and lineage. So people would continue to gravitate towards Fender-style guitars for literal generations, as long as guitarists revere the legion of Fender players before them. I say “would” because the damage here is IMO reputational. It doesn’t matter how much guitarists revere Hendrix, Gilmour, Clapton, and a zillion other legendary Strat players if enough word gets around that Fender guitars are made by assholes. They’ll stop making people feel cool. Corporate lawfare is extremely not rock ‘n’ roll.

4d4m 4mo ago
I agree with you due to cnc and production being relatively standardized
hmmokidk 4mo ago
I don’t think this is true. I think it’s a beginner musician attitude (due to branding) but musicians often grow out of it. I would never get a fender for quality / value reasons. Some of them look cool; which may be why they want to sue. But the quality of the instrument and the sound is too important to me personally. To me 3K is the most i’ve paid for an instrument, and I gig with two <600$ guitars.
- nickserv 4mo ago
  I think you're both right. Marketing is very effective, and lots of people are willing to pay a little bit more for a particular brand. On the other hand there's also lots of people who will look for the best value for the money, or want to support smaller luthiers. As you mentioned usually with experience one gravitates towards the second group, but most instrument purchases is entry level gear for beginners. Disclaimer: coming from classical guitar world, but have noticed largely the same pattern, eg someone paying more for an Alhambra when a regional luthier will be less. Not that Alhambra is a bad brand, just that those marketing salaries have to come from somewhere!

wyclif 4mo ago

Fender has cannibalized their brand, just like Ray-Ban and many other manufacturers known for a "classic" design. But what's changed recently is that now they're not just feeling the competition from premium-priced guitars; they're getting squeezed from the low end, sub-$1K part of the market coming from China and Indonesia. Recently I played a Chinese made Telecaster copy that was better in terms of quality and playability than any sub-Masterbuilt Fender. The fit, finish, and fretwork were all dramatically better than any Fender I've played (Fender also manufactures guitars in China and Indonesia). I'm a huge fan of the Esquire, Telecaster, and Stratocaster. It's a shame to see a once-great American brand get cooked by resorting to lawfare instead of QC.

jen20 4mo ago
> they're getting squeezed from the low end, sub-$1K part of the market coming from China and Indonesia. This was true in the 80s with Japanese competition as well (the last time Fender tried putting the body shapes back in the box) - Tokei and friends were making vastly better guitars than even the American Fender production at that point. The way Fender survived was by buying the top producers and forming Squier guitars as their entry level. > It's a shame to see a once-great American brand get cooked by resorting to lawfare instead of QC. They did this in the past too, largely over the headstock shape. My "main" Stratocaster-type guitars (despite owning several genuine Fenders of different vintages) are a pair of Levinson Blade R4s - one has the Fender-shape headstock and the other has a modified version from after Levinson got sued in the 90s.

Leherenn 4mo ago

Is there any specific technical value in the shape, or is it just iconic and there are plenty of other just as good shapes?