“Subject of this letter is your offer of products which infringe the copyright of our client’s Fender Stratocaster guitar,” an example of the Bird & Bird cease and desist letter, as shown by McKnight, reads.
“We insist that you immediately stop manufacturing, selling, marketing, or producing such infringing products.”
According to McKnight, who was given copies from different sources, the letter also demands the recipient recall all the guitars it has sold in the EU and destroy them.
I’m surprised at this. Companies have been making S-type guitars for over half a century. However, it sounds like the judgement in Germany was a summary settlement because the other side didn’t bother to show up.
One thing is very clear to me: I’ll never buy a new Fender instrument again. Fuck any company that does this. You don’t get to pick up your marbles and go home after giving them all away for FIFTY YEARS.
Nope. Fuck Fender. They’re digging their own grave.
Agreed. I don’t even know off hand how many Fender guitars I’ve owned over the years (somewhere in the dozens), but I’ve generally liked their products. This… Makes me think of Fender as just another copyright troll, which is such a bad look when your clientele are musicians.
Their problem is that these boutique instruments are on a higher level of quality than even their flagship models these days. Since they can’t compete on quality, they are trying to sue their way to winning the market with inferior product.
It’s for this reason I think they’ll lose the suit. It’s not obviously fender anymore. Hasn’t been since like 1975.
Unfortunately, they have more money for lawyers than probably the entire net worth of LsL.
Let’s see them go up against Yamaha. In fact, I’d be happy to see Yamaha start advertising their guitars as “strat-shaped” just to force Fender’s hand.
Let’s also make sure that Edward “Bud” Cole, the new CEO at Fender, gets full credit for this shitshow.
The stratocaster was designed in 1952-1954.
Leo Fender himself left the company in 1965, and he even used the stratocaster design later on in another company. The patent for the product design ran out in the 70s.
The question is what the hell has the company Fender even been doing in the last 70 years? They only hold the right to a dead man’s name. What kind of shitty business is that.
There will be a lot of backlash to this move. Idiots.
There’s already been a ton of backlash and I hope it continues. I never really interacted with Fender brands on social media but I think moving forward I can find the time to tell them that they made really dumb move and that people should check out various other guitar brands that don’t engage in this type of toxic litigation.
Oh Fender. You stupid fucking bastards.
