| > The shape of the guitar is very old (75+ years) They are basing their claims on copyright[1], which is longer than 75+ years[2]. The first case they filed (in Germany, against a Chinese manufacturer) "validated" their copyright claims because the Chinese manufacturer did not turn up to court so the court ruled in Fender's favor in a default judgment. The small companies being sued could still fight Fender in court and overturn that default judgment, but court cases are expensive and Fender is massive. It's Fender abusing the courts to bully their competition. [1] "The Dusseldorf court deemed that the Stratocaster design qualified as a copyrighted work of applied art under German and European law, thus prohibiting Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co. from manufacturing, offering or distributing guitars featuring the Stratocaster body shape in Germany and the EU." https://www.guitarworld.com/music-industry/fender-legal-ruli... [2] "The chosen term for a work was 70 years from the death of the author." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_... Leo Fender passed in 1991, so any copyrights attributable to him expire in the year 2061 (ie another 35 years from now). I'm not 100% sure this is the copyright situation Fender asserted, but it's probably something not very far off from this. If you think this copyright duration is absolutely ludicrous, you are correct. |
| |
| ▲ | bluGill an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Trademarks only apply if the thing isn't generic. I can legally copy the recipe for coca cola (if I can figure it out) and sell that as 'bluGill cola', but I can't sell it as coca cola even though it would be identical. There is ample evidence that the shape is generic - it has been copied by far too many to claim it isn't generic. I doubt they can show a properly registered copyright, which would have been required before 1978. I doubt the copyright laws back then would have even allowed copyrighting the shape like that (but I'm not a lawyer). If they can show they registered the copyright correctly under the old laws they would have a copyright case since copyright applies even if they are generic. Also, since the shape has functional aspects (see others), patents would be the correct protection, but the important patents (if any) have expired long ago. You can still patent something today if you make a variation of the shape - but it would be trivial for anyone to work around that patent since the main design is free of patents and a very specific minor change from the common shape it patentable. | | |
| ▲ | coldpie 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > I doubt they can show a properly registered copyright, which would have been required before 1978. I doubt the copyright laws back then would have even allowed copyrighting the shape like that (but I'm not a lawyer). None of that matters to Fender's case here, though. They benefit regardless of the outcome in court. If someone fights them and Fender wins, or no one fights them, then they cause an enormous, permanent headache to almost every single one of their competitors. If someone fights them and Fender loses, they cause an enormous, temporary headache to almost every single one of their competitors and otherwise there's no change in the market. The worst case for Fender is the status quo, there's no reason for them not to pursue this. The only way Fender loses here is if they piss off enough customers to cause a drop in sales. But that seems unlikely to me, even extremely pissed off customers forget about these things pretty quick, as Reddit and Elon Musk's white supremacist social network demonstrated after shitting all over their own users and seeing no terribly significant drop in usage. |
| |
| ▲ | hilariously an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They have to be actively fought for the entire time you own the rights to the trademark though, that doesn't seem to the be the case. | |
| ▲ | CWuestefeld 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trademarks are a fundamentally different kind of IP. With copyright and patent, the creator of the work is being protected. But with trademark law, it's not about protecting the content of the IP as such. It's about protecting the consumer from being misled into thinking they're getting the real thing. And given the guitar market at large, with about ten thousand different guitars in the general shape of a Strat, it's pretty much universally known that the name on the headstock is what you have to look at to differentiate. So long as that name isn't misleading, I have a hard time imagining how they could make a case of it. I mean, if the headstock says "Fernando Stratoblaster" or something, then MAYBE it's a little confusing. But my guitar, a Kramer Focus 6000 looked very nearly identical to a Strat (the edges are less beveled, the headstock is pointier, but at a quick glance...), but it quite clearly says that it's NOT a strat. Nobody's going to be fooled despite the striking similarity in shape. | |
| ▲ | ulbu an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | how is guitar shape a trademark? | | |
| ▲ | bluGill an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | You can trademark any shape. However by not protecting their trademark over the years (if they every had one - which I doubt) they lost it. | |
| ▲ | rwmj 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Design rights[1] are a thing. However they need to be continuously defended. You can't let competitors make your designs (without license) for decades and then suddenly turn around and try to enforce the right, as seems to be the case here. Plus in the EU there are overall limits, apparently 25 years. This is why I'm asking what the legal basis is for this case. It seems unlikely to be legally sound. Probably the German court made a mistake, and the company being sued should ignore Fender. (Not legal advice!) Edit: Someone else just posted that Fender is now owned by private equity, so it's the usual PE playbook. A sad end to a famous brand. Edit#2: Seems like the German court ruling was a default judgement because the other party failed to show up. So nothing to see here. Fender has no realistic case. [1] In the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_design | |
| ▲ | boxed 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | It can be. But in this case they haven't defended such a case for decades, so it seems a court should throw that argument out. |
|
|
