Thomann takes legal action against Fender(thomann.de) |
Thomann takes legal action against Fender(thomann.de) |
> 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.
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.
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?
I think the iPhone at one time defended the design of its “squircle” corners. Eventually settling out of court.
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.
US companies sometimes try to make "trade dress" or trademark claims, but that's much weaker than copyright.
Now other brands are eating their lunch, and Fender is seemingly trying a last hail marry to get this settled. My guess is that if they manage to get a positive ruling in Europe, they'll somehow try to use that as case for US courts.
Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48189539 - May 2026 (132 comments)
Compare this, for example, to smartphone chargers or headphones and their compatibility.
Having a court stop actual counterfeits -- sure, nobody has a problem with that. That's not what this is.
Then there was the headstock thing, Fender was notorious for pursuing makers of guitars with headstocks that had any resemblance to the Strat headstock. Let's ignore how limited the design space is considering the constraints of six strings - six tuners at the end of a narrow strip of timber. Fender was obviously acting in an anti-competitive way at that point. At the same time, the quality of their own products continued to drop. Coincidence?
Now they are going after anything that looks like an electric guitar.
The general "S-style" body form, as popularised/iconified by the Stratocaster is popular for many reasons. A lot of those reasons (I would say most) are practical/functional.
Fender shouldn't be allowed to possess the shape, let alone use it as an anti-competitive weapon in order to coast along for another century just because the brand happens to come with some notable IP.
Fender's monopoly over the shape shouldn't be protected by law/courts. Here's why:
It's a functional design -- a matter of ergonomics and practicality. For a lot of guitarists, the S body style is the most effective, comfortable shape to play.
For a concrete example of an "iconic", yet clearly functional design feature: the top point of the "S" is where the front strap hook is. Having this point protrude forwards (along the neck) helps balance the weight and this provides the player with physical control over the mass of the guitar.
Many of the subtle features of Stratocaster body are obvious practical improvements -- it's the result of filing down sharp edges that were noticed when attempting the play the instrument. Imagine you're starting from a classical acoustic design, what steps would you take to make it more playable and make it electric at the same time?
It's an incremental design built on forms that have been used by luthiers for centuries. It's not a Fender shape -- it's an (electric) guitar shape.
Archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260624025836/https://www.thoma...
2) Fender sued said small Chinese Aliexpress vendor in a regional German court for selling a "copied" design in Germany
3) The small Chinese guitar vendor didn't turn up, obviously
4) Fender got a default judgement that the S-type (Stratocaster etc.) guitar body shape (which has indisputably been in the public domain in the USA since 2009) is a "functional work of art" in which they have copyright.
5) Fender's weird law firm went on a rampage, in the EU and USA, using said default judgement as if it represents some kind of precedent, warning guitar firms (PRS included) and music retailers to stop selling them, recall and destroy their inventory on sale in the EU, and confirm they had done so, or be sued
6) guitar people, especially luthiers working in the USA who have solid reason to believe the S shape is public domain, took that about as well as you'd expect
7) Fender tried to walk it back, especially the bit about smashing perfectly good guitars
8) Thomann, based in Germany, certainly Fender's largest retailer outside the USA and one of the biggest music retailers in the world, have decided not to take it lying down.
Have seen several like this in the last months, though in much more niche areas and with barely any publicity.
Am I missing something about Germany following a precedent system for patent/copyright or something, or is this even dumber than it sounds?
Worse part is that lefty fenders always have something fucked because they put zero care into them, despite charging a premium for them.
Fender doesnt even make a good product. I've pulled strat style guitars out of dumpsters that were better than a fender.
I'm just super sick of hearing about this story. Guitar players online are way too worked up about this. Fender is being annoying, but there is no way I'm getting rid of my Fender guitar or amp over this, and there is no way any of this would stop me from buying another one.
The Fender shapes just don't need to be copied at all. I live near a famous boutique type shop. They may have some boutique guitars that rip off the shapes of Fenders, it's been tolerated, but they have a lot of guitars that don't rip off Fender shapes and many of them are really great guitars.
Too many players are acting like the sky is falling if Fender wins with any of this stuff. The sky is not going to fall. We'll go back to the way things used to be where Fender body shapes weren't ripped off so often and it will be fine.
I think some of the doom and gloom is also because too many players are super obsessed with buying more and more guitars all the time. It's all about what is the next purchase as opposed to just enjoying the guitar they have.
There's so many cool companies doing unique body shapes, if you're gonna take the time to build a guitar why not put some thought into the design?
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.
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-...
"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."
Audio hasn't changed at all in the last two centuries. An analog audio signal is fundamental physics and there's nothing to gain or change or improve in any meaningful sense. TRS/phono jacks likewise are just so brute force stupid and rugged that there was never a reason to change.
The connectors and interfaces never changed because the underlying signals never changed because there's nothing to change. Digial electronics on the other hand legitimately have gone through real and worthwhile changes, and been radically redefined many times in the last 60 years.
No need for "probably". That absolutely works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_F7aiOvdwE
(technically a "diddley bow": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diddley_bow)
So the whole thing really looks like legal bullying.
The S-type body shape has been in the public domain in the USA since 2009. One of the luthiers that Fender sent a C&D has hired the lawyer who secured that 2009 judgement against Fender, and he has been quite withering.
Fender have a huge uphill struggle here, and they clearly do not understand just how much time hobby guitarists with money spend watching Youtube. Big mistake.
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.
> 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.
Except this one is apparently coming from actual accredited lawyers? (Who knows, I'm not a lawyer, maybe it really does work that way and Fender is the first company to figure out how to exploit this)
Because the only way Trump Guitars can sell an LP-type guitar to US customers is that Gibson also lost a body-shape case like this (to Washburn, if I remember right?)
Sorry, I rushed through my comment and perhaps didn't make it clear.
They have a default judgement only. But they used it to demand US-based manufacturers recall European-bound inventory, destroy it and certify it destroyed.
Even though they know full well that inventory can legally be sold in the USA — which is part of the near-comical gaslighting walkback the FMIC CEO attempted the other day. They are already admitting it's not a USA thing.
(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.
- 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...
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.