certainly is a shame, Leo's probably turning in his grave.

but i have to say...they kinda deserve the !@$ in the butt. think about it. alright, you got these other companies making cheap strat copies and such and it does take away from the unique character of a true fender instrument, but see, i think the key here is "cheap". some people can't afford to sell their soul for a decent guitar (or lack thereof), so they buy a cheap copy from another company, which then fuels business for that item and company.

conclusion here is that if Fender wasn't so grubby and greedy with their price hikes, and learned to stay on a lower economic level with the general population, more people would buy their products, and then other companies would have much less momentum in the guitar market, in which case you'd probably see much less cheap copies floating around, or perhaps none at all.

i hate to say it, but they needed a reality check.

but you know, in a way that judge is right. how many simple guitar designs can you possibly think of anyhow? sure you can make some design changes, but i think in the end many guitar bodies out there somewhat resemble a strat. i agree, it is rather generic. sure maybe Leo was the first with the design, but i agree that its very hard not to copy that design with other guitars even with design variants.

its kinda like a chord progression. i think by now, we've pretty much discovered about all of the basic progressions that we're gonna get. they get re-used all the time. it's like how Tom Petty tried suing the Chili Peppers by supposedly ripping off "Mary Jane" when they wrote "Dani CA".
it's really pretty silly

There's a lot of that going around. Just to clear up a couple of things:

The idea that a company that created the original product should make cheaper and cheaper versions when confronted with competition of that product is counter to any branding reality. Read John Bolinger's column in Premier Guitar a couple of months ago to get some perspective on this.

Fender isn't "grubby and greedy." They are in business to make a profit, not to provide you with all the guitars you want for next to nothing.

That judge IS right, and not "in a way." He's totally right about trademark law

FInally, Tom Petty did not sue the Chili Peppers. In fact, he never even mentioned the similarity of the songs in an interview. A disc jockey in Delaware made a big deal of a perceived similarity between the two records, and after the standard game of Telephone the whole country thought he WAS suing. But when askled about it in a Rolling Stone interview, Petty said:

"Everyone everywhere is stopping me. The truth is, I seriously doubt that there is any negative intent there. And a lot of rock & roll songs sound alike. Ask Chuck Berry. The Strokes took “American Girl” [for their song “Last Nite”], and I saw an interview with them where they actually admitted it. That made me laugh out loud. I was like, “OK, good for you.” It doesn’t bother me ... If someone took my song note for note and stole it maliciously, then maybe. But I don’t believe in lawsuits much. I think there are enough frivolous lawsuits in this country without people fighting over pop songs."

Personally, 'see shape / specs copy-manufacturers as low-rent-unoriginal-sub low class.

'Will go for an original design with real name, thank you.

The words "real" and "genuine" and "authentic" come to mind when value and desirability are considered for purchase.

I can't say that I agree with your premise that Fender is grubby and greedy. Fender makes a guitar to meet pretty much any budget. Can't afford an American Fender? Get a Squier.

Go over to MusiciansFriend.com and compare Fender prices to Gibson prices. If you look by "price range," you'll find Fender's biggest grouping in the "$750-$1000" category; you'll find Gibson's biggest grouping in the "$2000-$3000" category.

If you want a Chinese-made guitar that you'll never be able to find replacement parts for and that was assembled with lead-based paint by a worker who gets a bowl of rice for his salary every day, go for it.

Face it. Nobody can compete on price with a Chinese-made knockoff. I'll bet there are Chinese who can do your job for one-fourth the wage. Does that make you "greedy and grubby?"

By the way, I'm not sure this law suit was solely (or partially) directed at cheap knock-offs; it may have been to go after high end copies like Sadowskis.

Litigants included Stuart Spector Designs, US Music Corporation, ESP Guitars, Sadowsky Guitars, Lakland Musical Instruments, Peavey Electronics, Warmoth Guitar Products, Schecter Guitar Research, Michael Tobias and Suhr Guitars. Not a Chinese name amongst them.

Warmoth already make S-, P-, J- and T-type necks under license from Fender. My, that must be a tense commercial relationship at present...

Cheers - C

And maybe not. They would have had to include Warmoth to keep the suit from looking frivolous. A phone call to Ken - "hey, we're moving on the bodies, you're in the suit, don't sweat it, we're still friends" - would have been enough, I think.

You think? That would make you feel better about being dragged through a legal process for five years, would it?

I'm wondering about all the names that are conspicuously not on that list. WD Music, James Tyler, Tom Anderson, MightyMite - for starters. How does that bear on the suit's frivolousness?

Cheers - C

Well, you got me there. But I doubt Fender named Warmoth without talking to them.

Unless they are locked into a license deal wtih them that Fender hates and are looking for Warmoth to break the deal.

Ceri, I think "hoovering" the carpet is a unique Britishism. I've never heard anyone in the US say it. However, I am very guilty of many of the things EllenW pointed out: I "xerox" papers, blow my nose with a "kleenex," slap on a "band-aid" when I have a cut, and drink a "coke" (even if it's actually a Pepsi). That last one is pretty unique to Texas and the South.

Interestingly, even the ubiquitous Aspirin began its life as a registered trademark of the Bayer company (along with another of their products, the similarly named Heroin).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark

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I really like all them "Aster" guitars. You know, like the Stratoc, Telec and Jazzm.

Ha! Yep, I do all of those (including "coke") - and more. Bic; Walkman; Cellotape; Scotch Tape; Rollerblade; Tupperware; Q-Tip; Escalator; and Dry Ice (those last couple I only just discovered are brand names from a website). And of course, Strat - right here on the trademark owner's website!

We also talk about a Stanley knife, whether or not Stanley made it. I think that's a box-cutter to you? On the other hand, I have an idea (maybe wrong) that you talk about an X-Acto even if the knife wasn't made by that company (?). It's a scalpel or model knife to us.

Sounded like Ellen has hands on experience of this stuff from the other side of the game. I wonder if she'll tell us more?

Cheers - C

Gibson tried real hard in the late 70's, known as the lawsuit era, to stop companies from coping their guitars. The prblem with the bodies is even gibson and fender were not the first to create single and double cutway guitars. These body shapes could be traced to instruments before these companies ever existed. I guess you could say that fender and gibson also copied their designs. This was the dreaded Norlin era for Gibson, and I wonder if they had spent their money on making the product better would they have been better served?

So when it become appearent that body shapes could not be trademarked, they started looking at the headstock design. The one thing that gibson could trademark was their unique mustache or open book design on the headstock. So Gibson won this battle in 76 or 77 and that is why you see the Japanese copiers guitars get away from the gibson and fender headstock. These copies can now be collectable if they are considered pre-lawsuit. They are pre-lawsuit if that open book headstock exist. Ibanez was the company that Gibson sued. They made extremely high quality copies, that were sometimes considered of better quality than the Gibson original version as did some of the other companies.

My Ventura is a pre-lawsuit L6s copy, which would date it around 76 or earlier since the 77 year was the year these companies had to have a unique headstock design. The weird thing about my Ventura was that I purchased it new in 1982 from a small local guitar store. Could it have really sat that long? The guitar plays amazing and sounds pretty good too

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

Exactly right. It's why my employer will send you a letter very quickly if you use any close variant on our name or a logo substantially identical to ours. This is especially critical when you offer a service or good that itself can't be protected. The Walt Disney Company can't stop others from making films but they can take many steps to insure that "you" don't cash in on their making films.

As to why Fender didn't protect the body design ... hard to say. It may be that at one time they didn't view others using a similar design as being a serious issue. We once let a company only very broadly in the same industry but offering a completely different service use a name almost like ours. But business conditions changed (the original "one horse" owner sold to someone who wanted to open a few outlets), so we told them they could no longer use the name.

The irony with Tokai is that their market share is being peppered with fakes.

The funny thing is the fake LP`s(or more accurately the fake Love Rocks-LR`s,) were made with mahogany, but the Tokai model they were being passed of as were predominantly plywood! (Not that most Tokai`s are playwood, but that the exact model being counterfeited was.)

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

What I remember reading was that the above companies sued Fender (not Fender suing them!) in order to stop Fender from getting trademarks on the classic Fender body shapes.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

I think there was more than that. One ruling was essentially that the shape had passed into the public domain after so many years.

Which seemed to be one of the same rulings in the recent Fender case. Which makes it odd that Fender tried to trademark the shapes in the first place.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.