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Fender loses guitar copyright case

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#21
Spector? Peavey? Tobias? Really? Seems like a huge stretch to me.

If Fender wanted their case to have any actual merit, they should have stuck to the companies that most closely mimic their guitar shapes (Sadowsky, Lakland, Lull, etc.). Who, in their right mind would confuse an MTD with a Fender? Does MTD have a model that closely resembles a Fender that I don't know about? Or Spector?

Otherwise, it seems like they are saying the every guitar/bass with a dual cutaway body design is infringing on their design. Which is a stupid position, to say the least. I like the guitars and the basses, but this seems like a waste of money on Fender's end. I'm a big fan of their guitars and basses, but not a big fan of this 50-years-too-late move on their part.
 
#26
gonzilla said:
Two notes-

1- I hope we start getting those reverse Thunderbirds again
2- The whole new glut of Fender-like shapes will hopefully drive Fender prices down.
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1. What have Reverse Thunderbirds got to do with Fender?
2. There'll be no new glut, as all the Fender-ish makers have always been doing it, its just that Fender have zero legal recourse left to fight it, unless they use Fenders headstock.
 
#28
I can see what Fender was attempting to do here..kinda save face on its body shapes,having been in the business a long time I can identify,from a distance,a "strat" body shape when I see it at once.......the same goes for the Gibson "Les Paul" design as well.
The same goes true for A Fender Jazz and Precision body shape.And even tho the guitar might not be a "Strat" the body design was absolutly taken from the real thing.
What I don't understand is why it took Fender so long to bring this to litigation...!I wonder what would happen if Fender decided to make a bass or guitar that had the Les Paul shape to it..would Gibson mind?:hmm:

Ampeg club # 436
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#32
Note: This is not a copyright case, but a trademark case. Trademarks must be vigorously defended from Day 1, or they can become generic (one reason Xerox was so litigious about photocopies), and the appeal board said as much in their response. They never could have copyrighted the body styles since they filed design patents (which expire) on them and patent and copyright protections are never given on the same items. The designs were good enough that when the design patents expired, there came a flood of copies. They were able to protect the headstock likely because the Fender logo was considered part of the headstock design. Too bad for Fender, but it really was their own fault.
 
#33
Fenampbass said:
having been in the business a long time I can identify,from a distance,a "strat" body shape when I see it at once.......
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Yeah, but can you identify whether or not it's actually a Fender based solely on the outline of the body.

Case in point: Anyone who thinks they are able, please indicate which of the following "telecaster style" guitar bodies is the Fender:

telea.png


teleb.png


telec.png
 
#38
muzikman7 said:
Roger I never met you so this is not personal, but deep down you know you might not have had the success you have without Leo fenders designs. At least the people who borrow the Fender body style should acknowledge the source of their ideas.
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He would be the first to tell you that it's because of Leo that he's had the success that he has. He isn't (nor are 99.9% of the builders out there doing Fender inspired instruments) claiming that it's their design, because that would be silly and untrue.

What is true is that they took Leo's design and did their own thing with it. This ruling simply means that that's going to be okay to do from a legal standpoint in the future.
 
#39
lpdeluxe said:
I've read several places that Leo Fender was litigatious -- he went after Gibson for using offset waists on the Fire/Thunderbird series (I read somewhere that Gibson rebutted, using the F5 mandolin from the '20s as support of prior use), but it may be that he didn't protect some of his inventions as well as others. It's clear that he spent a lot of time developing the Precision bass; the original outline appeared in 1951, and was refined with the contours in '55 or thereabouts, and has remained the same since. But we can also note that Leo borrowed the shape for his G&L basses (I owned an L2000 with an almost identical shape to the P).

In fact, the Precision shape is iconic for the simple reason that Leo Fender did his homework: try sometime to design an electric solid body bass that accommodates the 34" scale, allows access to the upper frets, and hangs comfortably on a strap, and you'll find that Fender didn't miss anything. The Jazz wasn't so much an improvement as it was a variation. I've played both styles and I think the P is superior simply because it sits squarely on the A-frame stands I like, while the J wants to tilt.

There's no question that Fender was first, but the issue isn't about who originated it, but how the law works when intellectual property rights are not vigorously defended. I don't think anyone will mistake an Ibanez for a Fender, even if it may be shaped like a Fender. Ditto for Sadowsky and others. Roger Sadowsky is not evil just because he used what have proven to be public domain shapes for his basses -- in fact, we hear all the time around TB from owners who think their instruments are far superior to Fender. Sadowsky doesn't compete with Fender, and vice versa; until Fender starts paying the same attention to detail (and charging the same prices) no one will buy a Fender thinking they have bought a Sadowsky (and, I'm sure, no Sadowsky buyer will go around saying, "it's just as good as a Fender").

So too bad, FMIC, as owners of Fender you came along nearly 40 years too late to right all the potential wrongs...so get back to doing what you do, which is making well designed basses and guitars for reasonable prices.

What do I play? Oh, I own three Fender Precisions, of course!
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THIS! THIS EXACTLY!
 
#40
Darkstrike said:
Thought they had an official licence?
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Warmoth only licenses the Fender headstock because that is all that was trademarked. That is all Fender asked them to license according to the ruling.

That is the point. As I posted in the other thread, Fender had every opportunity to trademark the body 50 years ago and chose not to. They only trademarked the headstock and Fender logo, as well as some of the guitar names. They never made an attempt to stop anyone from reproducing the body shapes.

Now it is WAY too late.

They let it go years ago. Too bad for them. Good for everyone else.
 
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