Well, I would bet that this would not have happened this way if Fender had been making a drum set called the Broadcaster or a guitar shaped like a Gretsch guitar. Warwick absolutely stole the Spector design, the fact that it was worked out does not just make the story go away. Which, of course, is why we still have SO MANY "lawsuit" guitars and basses.
The offence of "stealing" a product design is a relatively new concept. Especially when people attempt (with some success these days) to apply it to "designs" that neither hold a patent nor a copyright. But that's the Wild West of "intellectual property" and the legal quagmire attorneys have created around it.
In Leo's day the idea of suing somebody for something as simple as sharing the same name for a product (especially if it were a common word found in any dictionary) would have likely never come up. And very probably would have gotten short shrift in any US court. In the case of Fender's
Broadcaster vs Gretsch's
Broadkaster, the simple argument that they were
different spellings for
different products would have ended it right there. That was one reason why names like Xerox and Kleenex were invented.The 50s and 60s were the heyday of unique product names for precisely that reason. Very few people would have had the temerity to think they could legally claim a
single dictionary word as their own.
Contrast that to today, with Apple unilaterally deciding
any name beginning with the letter "i" belongs to them. Or Monster Cable routinely bullying anybody who uses the term "monster" in any way shape or form when speaking of a product not theirs.
Totally insane. But that's symptomatic of a nation that's lost the courage to innovate, and now prefers to litigate, block innovation, and wring every possible penny out of whatever they are
currently selling. Also one more symptom of a society or nation in the early stages of decline, if you're a student of history and economics. But so it goes. Another empire will come along and replace ours eventually if things continue down the path they're on.
As far as willing to bet it wouldn't have happened that way under a different set of circumstances...well, neither one of us were there...and we can speculate endlessly by changing around the details of what actually happened. That's always fun. But I'm guessing in the legal climate of those times, Gretsch wouldn't have had a leg to stand on - hence the more collegial and professional approach Gretsch took of simply asking Fender, as a favor, to pick a different name. Because that's the way a lot of this sort of thing got handled prior to around the early 80s when the concept of "branding" began to attain the level of religious belief in the business world it holds today.
But whatever. Today it's the Telecaster guitar and the Broadkaster drumset. Everybody's happy. And nobody's confused.
) 
