“They Got it Right the First Time” – Fender Lawsuits Attempt to Stop S-Style Copies

Written by: Ryan Dacey

How many times have we heard this? And it’s not really surprising when you look at how seemingly timeless Leo Fender’s designs were anyway. Much has been made of how he didn’t know how to play guitar, so how did he come up with something so intrinsically appealing to millions of guitarists? Is the landscape of what is desirable really that different now than in 1950? Yes and no. 

One thing is for certain: Leo Fender was a brilliant designer. He was also governed by practicality. Through it all, his greatest strength was listening. He tirelessly put his work through rigorous testing at the hands of his trusted advisors — and more importantly — he put these instruments directly in the hands of musicians. He wanted to tap into what working musicians wanted. Forget that he couldn’t strum a simple G chord. He smartly chose to garner feedback. What he did with that feedback allowed him to apply it to his design philosophy. Ya gotta love collaboration.

But where does the line between collaboration and theft exist? Can other guitar manufacturers take Leo’s designs and “collaborate” to create modern versions of Stratocasters and Telecasters? Or does building a non-Fender “S-Style” guitar infringe on Fender’s copyright and, perhaps more importantly, their legacy? That’s what Fender aims to find out by sending cease-and-desist letters to other manufacturers copying their iconic designs. Is this the right thing for Fender to do to protect their brand, or are they just hurting smaller builders? That is the question… 

Countless guitarists refer to gear as simple tools. If a tool is defined as “something to use to get the job done,” then look no further than the humble Fender Telecaster. By many accounts, it’s a blunt-force instrument designed to work year-in and year-out through any climate. 

Fender themselves have sunk countless dollars into everything from re-creating these primordial slabs “just as they were in 1951” — and (gasp!) they even dare to “improve” on the classic template with myriad updates over the last 75 years. To what end? And, if you are to believe the hundreds of brands that have “borrowed” this very template, they will tell you to look beyond the visual similarities and focus on what makes their iterations “modern” versions refined in a way to justify their existence. Either way, it’s still just a tool, right?

Much has been made of the fact that neither Leo Fender, nor any of his successors, made measures to copyright their guitar body styles. The iconic headstock designs (which were liberally appropriated from Paul Bigsby’s designs of the late ‘40s, but that’s another discussion) have been trademarked — and wisely so. But for decades, Fender stood by as thousands of Strat-style guitars were foisted upon an eager buying public. So we get to where we are today: the Stratocaster has been legally deemed part of the public domain — or even worse — “generic”. Since Fender historically hasn’t owned exclusive rights to their own body design, why shouldn’t other brands benefit from it?

Recently, Fender started issuing cease-and-desist letters to several US-based guitar makes, which has sent the internet abuzz about what an atrocity this is. Big, bad Fender is now the bully. Conversely, there are those who maintain it was Fender’s right to finally stand up and stop people from unabashedly ripping off the Stratocaster right down to the last screw. 

The debate vaguely harkens back to the analogy of the kid and the cookie jar. The kid knows he probably shouldn’t sneak a cookie out of the jar without permission. But he does it anyway. And what happens? He repeatedly takes the cookies with absolutely no repercussions. So, why not keep doing it? 

Well, now the kid is being told he can’t have any more cookies. Instead of ultimately admitting guilt, the kid grows indignant. “I’ve always enjoyed taking a cookie whenever I want to. Who are you to tell me I can’t do that now?” Replace “the kid” with “non-Fender guitar companies” and the “cookie” with “Stratocaster.” Does the fact that brands were stealing/borrowing/appropriating the Stratocaster design since the ‘60s make this irrelevant? Or, was it simply unscrupulous in the first place? 

As the old music industry adage goes “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”

Conventional wisdom will speculate that an artist is compelled to create simply for the sake of one’s own art. If Leo Fender was an artist, he definitely suffered for that art. But, he was also a shrewd businessman. 

The Stratocaster wasn’t made to just introduce a new model to the public. His previous offering — what today we know as the Telecaster — was initially derided on its inception. We know what happened next: the Tele caught on as a practical and utilitarian guitar to which countless musicians flocked. Well, like a good artist, Leo wasn’t satisfied. He believed he could do better. The Tele was too successful to ditch entirely. So he turned his eyes to elevating the relatively crude design of the Tele into something more universally comfortable and luxurious. 

Fast forward over70 years later and it’s hard to think of a way to better the design of the Fender Stratocaster. So, tapping into the old philosophy of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” hundreds of fledgling guitar makers rolled out their version of the venerable Fender double-cut electric guitar. 

Did Leo want to make money? Of course he did. Was he solely ruled by the almighty dollar? Maybe not. Regardless, he wanted to design the ultimate guitar — in both form and function. He was compelled to do it in the first place. Problem is, when art becomes profitable, the money supersedes the desire to simply create.

Fender, like several other Big American Guitar Brands, languished in the 1970’s. Did they still produce some good guitars? Sure. That said, numerous Japanese-made “F-style” guitars cropped up to steal some market share. And these guitars weren’t just slapped together in mass quantities to flood the market; they were arguably much better than the brand they were copying. 

Yes, these were Fender copies — from the headstocks, bodies, electronics and even the logo style. Brands like Tokai, Greco, Fernandes, and — perhaps most notably — Ibanez were making high-quality guitars of the Classic California design, often for much less money. A couple things to point out here that may be even more relevant today:

1. Fender is said to have issued cease-and-desist letters to these Japanese brands in efforts to keep them out of the US guitar market. 
2. These copy guitars bore such impressive construction, that Fender USA pretty much dried up by the early ‘80s and moved much of their manufacturing to — you guessed it — Japan. Today, many of these Japanese-made Fender (and Squier) guitars are very collectable.
3. The Fender USA execs knew they had to get their act together if they wanted their legacy to continue on home soil. Yes, the Japanese Fenders were and are excellent iterations of the classic Teles, Strats, P & J Basses we’ve all coveted. It not only reminded Fender USA of what they used to be — it kicked them in the ass. 

Can we point to the Japanese “lawsuit era” guitars as the sole reason Fender had their miraculous resurrection through the 1980s on through to today? Probably not. But it was certainly a major catalyst. 

Just as Ibanez was feeling industry pressure to stop making Fender-style knockoffs, they put pressure on themselves to come up with original designs — many of which are still around. This proves that there’s still room out there for new and exciting guitar designs. Yes, some may be a derivative of, say, a Stratocaster. But ask any fan of the Ibanez RG Series if they think they’re just playing a “dressed-up Strat,” and they will beg to differ.

So let’s say this Fender lawsuit goes as planned. All these global guitar brands making Strat-style guitars will have to come up with models they tweak the Stratocaster design into something new and different. Hell, maybe these designs will look nothing like a Fender Strat. Not a bad thing, right? Does that leave Fender to crank out 75-year-old designs in perpetuity? On the one hand, yes it does. But if we were to delve into the hundreds of Fender-made Stratocaster offshoots over the last 40 years, one would have to ask: if Leo got it “right” in 1954, what is the need for “improvement”? 

The curse legacy brands like Fender endure vacillates between “Well, they haven’t come up with anything new and exciting in decades” and “They just don’t make them like they used to.” If Fender ends up being the only brand legally allowed to produce Stratocaster-shaped guitars, those arguments aren’t likely to go away anytime soon.

Will the recent Fender lawsuits result in a guitar renaissance, forcing other builders to create new, exciting, and (it’s always possible) better designs than the Fender Stratocaster? Or is it a classic case of a greedy Goliath coming after all the Davids, killing competition, forcing the small guys out, and leaving only the big brands intact? Only time will tell…