Posted by Audiophilip 2 days ago
> In 1985, Bill Schultz and a group of investors—including company employees and external companies like Servco Pacific Capitol—purchased Fender from CBS for $12.5 million and renamed it "Fender Musical Instruments Corporation" (FMIC).
> Ownership changed in December 2001, when private equity firm Weston Presidio bought a controlling stake in Fender for $57.8 million.
> Longtime investor Servco instead bought out Weston Presidio, with TPG Growth as an equal partner.
> In 2020, Servco bought out TPG Growth's stake, making them Fender's majority owner.
A long history of private equity ownership. I'm not sure CBS owning them would be much better, which started in 1965.
As much as I like to blame private equity for the downfall of once great companies, I'm not sure how to feel about this one, as they've been investor owned and passed around for decades.
It's the 2000-2020 exchanges that were detrimental
I play a Gretsch... which interestingly is actually "controlled" by Fender after looking it up; still owned by the Gretsch family
(It’s surprisingly hard to think of a motivating example.)
Too many Clapton lawyers have gotten hip to boutique builders. Fender would rather make them buy a $5000 Masterbuilt Custom Shop Deluxe Roadworn Heritage Double Relic No-Caster than a Tom Anderson or Suhr. Same for kids buying Harley Bentons and ESPs - a $1000 Indonesian-built instrument is their future if Fender has anything to say about it.
The thing is, they already do that, or have in the relatively recent past. Arguably, they invented that move in the 1980s when they started selling non USA/Japanese models as Squier models.
There's only so much that brings them, though, and guitar music ain't what it used to be. The pie isn't growing very much (maybe at all) and now there's competition trying to capture more of the market.
Would Bill Schultz have done the same thing if the 80s and 90s hadn't been so good to rock music? Hard to say, but if the alternative was "No more Fender", maybe.
But the weird German lawsuit was always about the fact that some private equity suits (or bad Hawaiian shirts, it seems) are upset that Thomann (and others) sell the PRS Silver Sky, which as they have probably deduced from the reverb.com data they now own, likely outsells equivalent Fender models by some margin.
So I think Thomann are just bringing it on.
And they aren't the only ones: LSL hired the lawyer who won the judgement that put the S-type body shape in the public domain in 2009.
I think it’s more likely that this is about the ST series than about the Silver Sky.
Each Silver Sky model (SE or non) outsells the equivalent Stratocaster model, from what I understand, by a noticeable margin, which Servco will now know with clarity, because they have sales data from reverb (which they acquired one month before they took out this lawsuit).
It is a naïve take, but have a look at what Fender's CEO looks like, how he dresses and carries himself, and tell me that a big part of this isn't injured pride that John Mayer went to PRS.
I think if this was really about the cheap body guitars — a nearly zero-margin market for decades — they wouldn't have sent a C&D to LsL or PRS, because that was always going to invite trouble.
Harley Benton is a problem at some small level and I am sure Fender will suggest it is, but Fender have had a "buy the real thing" type of marketing campaign for both Fender and Squier since the 90s at least.
The 2009 lawsuit made this clear; it detailed all Fender's "buy original" marketing campaigns as a way of pointing out that Fender has never policed the right to make the S-type body shape.
Squier competes pretty adequately with Harley Benton and all the other cheap brands; at that price, being "Fender's budget brand" has prudence associated with it.
What has changed is that Fender are losing out at the top end to high-end luthiers who give a shit, and PRS. And now they know exactly how badly. This lawsuit will feature a lot of data from reverb.com, I suspect.
Fender sells at least 10x more guitars than PRS.
The server was some tower server in a back office with a note reminding everyone not to turn it off.
With Thoman being hugged to death right now I would like to think of there being a similar situation (its probably fine, but it made me feel nostalgic).
The hardware manager was cool and would let employees turn slabs of wood into Tele- and Strat-style bodies after hours.
When the Fender/German court ruling came down, my first thought was: Fender has had roughly 70 years with the Stratocaster design, and the broader industry has been making S-style guitars for decades.
Surely at some point a body shape becomes generic, right?
It's never belonged to Fender Corp
I think the iPhone at one time defended the design of its “squircle” corners. Eventually settling out of court.
Two legal questions they will now be asked, by Thomann or LsL, are:
- if such a copyright could exist, what shape precisely are Fender arguing it would cover?
- if such a copyright could exist, would Fender (the company) have title to it?
Answering these questions could get them into some difficulty, legally. Neither are obvious and the second one is really problematic.
https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/fender-loses-guitar-...
https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91161403&pty=OPP&eno...
You would think this would have been quite an easy win, because regardless of who makes guitars with S-type bodies, the outline of the Stratocaster or Telecaster is surely sufficiently identifiable with Fender as to be something they could at least claim should be their trademark in certain categories (on merchandise etc.)
Fender failed to prove that if people saw a line art outline of the Stratocaster, they would associate it first with "Fender". And indeed an illustrated dictionary at the time used such an outline to just generically illustrate "Electric guitar", apparently.
And in that finding:
Finally, there is no evidence of record that from the
first production of the guitars incorporating these shapes
in the early 1950s until 2003, that applicant or its
predecessors in interest ever treated the outlines of the
body shapes as trademarks. In fact, we may infer from the
evidence of record that applicant and its predecessors
themselves did not view them as trademarks. They never
policed the body shape, only the word marks and headstock
profiles. In addition, they never claimed trademark rights
in the body outlines publicly through, for example, the
catalogues, until 2004. Rather, they only claimed the word
marks and the headstock profiles. In the meantime, many
other guitar manufacturers sold guitars with the identical
body shapes for at least 30 years, either as complete
guitars or in the form of kits.
And this — from a deposition from Warmoth as far as I can determine (they made spare parts) which makes it clear that Fender never entered into an agreement with Warmouth about the body shape, only the neck (because of the headstock shape which they believed was trademarked):
Q. And you have a licensing agreement to
manufacture what from Fender?
A. Replacement necks utilizing the Fender
trademark head shape.
Q. In those discussions utilizing that license,
was there any conversation or written
documentation with reference to body shapes?
A. No.
Q. Would your company be harmed if you’re no
longer able to make body shapes depicted in [126,
928 and 127]?
A. It would have a significant impact on our
sales numbers and value [sic] of employees.
Q. Why are you an opposer in this proceeding?
A. I’ve been making these body shapes for 30
years, unopposed, untrademarked, and have built a
business on making these parts. There’s a lot of
demand for it. While I make other body shapes,
the demand for them is pretty insignificant when
compared to these three shapes.
So even if they do have ownership of some kind of copyright, they've never asserted it before and three decades of their own conduct kind of militates against them being able to enforce it.
And they aren't the only ones, the finding goes on because Fender took action against multiple companies (this is around page 30–40 or so).
Leo knew and acknowledged his body inspirations (Bigsby and Rickenbacker), and considered his true IP to be in sound, pickups, mechanics, tremolo...
I really wish Warmoth or PRS could get some legal fee subsidizing to push back.
I always read around here how european server companies are incompetent so there is no european infrastructure so european companies have to host everything on AWS. But this biggest european music store apparently powers their huge store from some server in the back office?
Which is it?
US companies sometimes try to make "trade dress" or trademark claims, but that's much weaker than copyright.
A more serious review of the works of applied art problem comes from the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts.[2] That article ends with "Thus, the 'separability' line Congress has drawn, albeit often difficult to discern coherently, places most overall designs of useful articles in the public domain." Separability means being able to take the decorative design off the useful object. This covers logos on T-shirts, for example. A T-shirt with no logo still works as a T-shirt. But if you can't take the decorative part off the functional object, it's not separable. The common squiggle-shaped bicycle rack is an excellent example. That won design awards and is admired, but it's not copyrightable - you can't take the squiggle off the bike rack and still have the bike rack.[3]
The Fender Stratocaster hits that limit - take away the Strat form, and there's no guitar there.
[1] https://legal-resources.uslegalforms.com/a/applied-art-doctr...
[2] https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/a...
[3] Brandir Int’l, Inc. v. Cascade Pac.Lumber Co https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/834...
Edit: of course this case is in Germany, so US law doesn't apply and I claim not information on what their laws are.
Plus, FMIC may not even be able to prove that they legally own any rights that do exist! It's not at all clear they acquired the long-lived rights from Leo Fender when he sold to CBS; they only secured a ten year agreement not to compete, and the design patent they had on some aspects of the body shape would have expired in 1969 or 1970.
The body shape is in the public domain in the USA; it has been for 17 years.
Part of me thinks that they are insane and part of me thinks they want to be acquired because they have debts.
(Absolutely baller move for LSL to hire that guy)
Because the AZES is clearly a double-cutaway S-type guitar shape, but it is just different enough to spot. And that then raises the question of whether Fender's own variations are as noticeable, because one of theirs has an AZES-type top cutaway.
This is when the penny dropped for me on that first point — when I read last week they had sent a letter to Ibanez.
Fender's weird CEO did say it's "not about all double cutaway" guitars. But if it is about a PRS and it is about an Ibanez, they are going to have to get somewhat specific about what they are claiming.
ETA: I reckon Fender will fold, because I think the second point is entirely possible. If CBS could have stopped Leo Fender selling S- and T-type body shapes entirely on the basis of what they owned, why did they only secure what amounts to a non-compete agreement?
The big risk for FMIC is in discovery on this point, I reckon. It will do a lot of harm to their reputation if it turns out they have been properly advised they have no claim and they've gone ahead anyway.
One key thing here is that the Stratocaster did have a design patent attached, and when your design patent expires, that's it; none of that is protected.
But the guitar was designed in 1954 (and indeed the body shape in 1951, fundamentally, because the Fender Precision bass guitar looked like that first). So the design patent was gone by 1970.
At the time, US copyright did not apply to functional shapes, and most of the core aspects of the Strat shape are actually functional — cutaways and sculpting.
Manufacturers like Schecter were making guitars with an S body shape by 1979. So this isn't new, and it is weird.
That would be the whole shape.
Yes, that's what I said.
The various curves and bevels on the Stratocaster aren't arbitrary aesthetic features, they're affordances to fit the human body. Change them too much and you get a guitar that won't balance on your knee or that pokes you in the ribs or that limits your access to the high frets.
Ola Strandberg set out to design the most ergonomic guitar possible. His design is both radical and basically derivative of the Strat, because Leo Fender happened to find something close to the perfect solution in 1954.
https://strandbergguitars.com/en-GB/product/boden-essential-...
> Ola Strandberg set out to design the most ergonomic guitar possible
It looks somewhat ... not how you expect the guitar to look.
More or less, yes.
If you "fill" the cutways on a Strat you have a typical guitar shape.
You want the upper horn there or somewhere near it because the upper strap lug needs to be about there for balance, but some players (especially those with bigger hands) will want their thumb to be free from being blocked by the top of the guitar while they are playing the higher frets, so there's a cutaway. You then want the lower horn to have some of the classic shape below it if you want the guitar to be playable sitting down.
The slope across the top corner of the Strat beyond the bridge is there so that players (in particular guitarists who wear their guitars a bit higher with the fretboard pointing more upwards) don't have the upper arm of their right hand leaning uncomfortably across the edge of the guitar.
Some of these elements were protected by Leo Fender's original design patent, I think, but I can't remember which.
"The upper horn ensures perfect balance, the cutaways make it easier to play in the upper registers, and the contours of the body increase playing comfort. The shape of the Stratocaster was created to provide musicians with the most functional and ergonomic tool possible.
This is exactly why it has been taken up, developed further and reinterpreted by luthiers all over the world over decades."
- Flat top
- Solid body, typically softer/lighter woods
- Bolt-on neck (as opposed to set or through-body)
- Double cutout (as opposed to single/no cutout, V, or other irregular shaped necks) with a longer cutout on top compared to the bottom
- Carved cavity in the top of the body
- "Loaded" pickguard (electronics mounted to it, instead of the body)
- Straight jack mounted into the pickguard
- "Tummy tuck" carved in the back
- Fat/flat shaped bottom of the body like a tele, as opposed to rounded like an LP.
All of these are functional properties of the guitar that have tradeoffs and benefits compared to other designs.
You can have two strats sound completely different but look identical to the untrained eye and the reason for preferring the style has a lot to do with the weight of the instrument and how that weight is distributed when playing standing, and how the body fits in your hands/arms and against your body. There's an argument to be made that the strat is near optimal for comfort in playing.
If you look at competing designs that (PRS McCarty, Ibanez, Schecter, Gretsch - basically anyone) the specific curves may be different but they all look like a Strat because it's genuinely hard to design a different body that feels the same.
The St Vincent signature is one style that I think needs to get more popular but it's not for everyone.
[1] https://chinese-guitars.com/products/black-stratocaster-styl...
Also that first example is a Fender, afaict. Fender has been making cheap strats and teles in China for years. They used to do it exclusively under the Squire brand name but that changed about a decade ago.
I personally do not like the price though.
I don't think that's true at all. A strat ("strat style" or "s-style") is a shape and configuration. Many of the non-Fender strats are perfectly fine guitars (I have one) from major manufacturers like Ibanez, ESR, Jackson, and others. See forex: https://www.sweetwater.com/c589--S_style--Electric_Guitars
What I meant by "copy" is when it looks exactly the same.
Fender will have a difficult time claiming much in the way of the design of the pickups or pickguard, or the tremelo bridge, because some of that was in the original design patent anyway, and that is long expired.
Plus, for example, the two-pivot trem bridge design they use now that has been copied is not the same as in the patent; they actually copied this innovation themselves. And they use different tuners I think.
Much of this stuff has been litigated already in 2009. And again, a really important point is that back in 2009 they could not prove they had chain of title to even make any claim of copyright, even if such a claim were possible.
FMIC could not or would not demonstrate that they had ownership (and there is really good, very obvious evidence in the market that CBS could not prove that in 1969 either)
So if the Thomann case goes to court in Europe they will have to prove they do, and if it gets into a discovery process the court might hear that Fender have been advised that they definitely do not, and that would be devastating, because that would cast the letters they have been sending in a very different light.
Almost all of the variation between sufficiently similar electric guitars, barring the quality of the pickups and maybe some of the electronics, can be eliminated in the setup.
And a lot of the expensive luxury stuff people are convinced has an impact on the sound has approximately zero impact on the sound.
Making two guitars sound similar, especially if the goal was that these guitars should sound similar, isn't all that hard. But also just because they're both the same style of guitar, doesn't mean the goal was for them to sound the same. Even just looking at Fender's line up, different strats have different pickups which are designed to sound different
In particular the cultural impact of the S-shape guitar has been enhanced by people playing non-Fender S-shapes.
Think Eddie van Halen on his Frankenstrat which has it's own Wikipedia entry and has been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That was probably a Charvel body.
That goes to the heart of the "work of applied art" argument.
Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48189539 - May 2026 (132 comments)
Archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260624025836/https://www.thoma...
Leo Fender himself declined to copyright the Strat body
Leo Fender himself sold "Strat clones" of the exact variety Fender Corp is trying to ban, after the sold the Fender name. I own one.
So Fender Corp is trying to retroactively assert that Leo Fender stole his own design from Fender Corp in 1979, they didn't have any issue for 47 years, but now because a Chinese company didn't show up in German court, they have eternal license to the design Leo Fender explicitly chose not to sell them.
Fuck Fender. My Jazz Bass is still my favorite instrument, I've had it 20 years and played hundreds of gigs, but I guess I'm never buying another