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This is a place where European copyright law is significantly different from US copyright law. In the US, copyright cannot cover a "functional part", which is why there is a third party auto parts industry. Improved functionality can be covered by a utility patent, but that lasts only 20 years. Designs can be protected by design patents, which last only 15 years. So in the US, any rights left in the form of the Stratocaster expired long ago.

US companies sometimes try to make "trade dress" or trademark claims, but that's much weaker than copyright.

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Fender has protected the strat design under the claim of "work of applied art" (https://spotlight.fender.com/newsroom/news/1004) which is also a concept in US copyright law, they just don't have a judgement for it etc. in their favour, unlike in Europe.

I can't find the details, but this needs to be under the copyright laws of the 1950s, which were very different from today. If they didn't properly register and re-register the copyright over the years the copyright is public domain. A lawyer will need to figure out these details of course.

Edit: of course this case is in Germany, so US law doesn't apply and I claim not information on what their laws are.

European copyright law has broader coverage than US law. Europe recognizes "sweat of the brow" copyright. Some databases are copyrightable in the EU even though there was no human creativity involved. The US does not do that, because the copyright clause in the Constitution limits the reach of intellectual property law. See Feist vs. Rural Telephone (phone directories not copyrightable), Bridgeman vs. Corel (copies of public domain content not copyrightable), and Meshwerks vs. Toyota (3D scans of real world objects not copyrightable). The way new cases are going, AI-created content mostly isn't copyrightable, either.

How was European copyright law in the 1950s? That is relevant here and I don't know.

That article, and LLMs, seem to pick up on an article from US Legal Forms.[1] That article itself reads like something written by an LLM.

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...

But technically the guitar does not have to have a shape of a strat. It could be any other shape, why not be creative and make your own design?

Because strats sell. Oddly shaped guitars don't, or at least not for a long time, and would never break into the top 10 best selling guitar shapes.

But I think people who want to buy a strat, would prefer to buy a Fender strat and not a cheaper copy that has the same shape but might sound worse?

I personally do not like the price though.

OTH people who want to buy strat would prefer to buy "strat with all inherited problems already fixed", be it PRS silver sky, or any boutique brand like LSL / Sandberg / Suhr / Tom Anderson.

I don't play electric guitar (fretted, anyway) at the moment, and I think John Mayer is very beige, but the Silver Sky SE is a really good guitar. They fixed a lot of stuff, and the lower cutaway is really nicely done.

Fender makes a whole series of Strats at different price points. The challenge is even at the high end Fender has inconsistent QA, so the 'knockoffs' are sometimes way better quality/consistency. See this video for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU7RUpkXsV0

I think I watched that video but sadly there is no sound comparison to demonstrate the quality issues.

A lot of guitar quality signals will not show through easily in the sound. Like how easy or difficult it is to fret the strings, how well it stays in tune in a controlled environment over time, fit and finish work, etc. That kind of stuff makes the difference between a guitar that can be played, and a guitar which is fun to play.

Right.

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.

sound doesn't really tell you about quality issues, quality issue are more does it have any fret ends that cut into your fingers as you move up and down the neck, are any of the frets too high and causing buzzing, does it maintain its pitch or do you frequently need to re-tune it, is it well setup from the factory, are the strings too high, things like that.

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

Can't compete on quality, so compete by attempting to use the courts to bludgeon your competitors. A tale as old as capitalism

> would prefer to buy a Fender strat

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

Those mostly do not look like copies; they have slightly different shape, the jack is located in a different place, Ibanez has shaper horns, the pickups are different, many do not have a pickguard. However, PRS Silver Sky looks somewhat close to the original to me, although it has a different headstock.

What I meant by "copy" is when it looks exactly the same.

The Silver Sky also has a scalloped lower cutaway.

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.

I'm looking at buying one now and as far as I can tell Fender seems to make shoddy quality instruments these days. I see a lot of recommendations for PRS and others.

I wish there was some kind of audio comparison.

It would just end up a comparison of the pickups, because to a first approximation that's the only thing that matters.

A lot of it is also the history associated with all the strat cats from the 1950s onwards and really good marketing by fender, you're buying a real strat because you want to be in that company (Buddy Holly to Gilmour etc). I recall only wanting a strat when i was in my wannabe-yngwie phase. nothing else would fit.

To be fair there is nothing in the shape that makes it sound better than other guitars; so it is not like those modem chip makers or video codec developers that patent the only optimal way to achieve the goal and prevent anybody from competing. Fender does not prevent anyone from making a better guitar. So I do not like copying. It would be better if everyone used their own unique shape rather than something from 50s.

The argument has nothing to do with the sound. A strat style guitar is characterized by:

- 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.

Yes but there are exact or almost exact clones like this (it even has Fender logo, but the price is suspicious): [1] [2]

[1] https://chinese-guitars.com/products/black-stratocaster-styl...

[2] https://e-catalog.com/KRAMER-FOCUS-VT-211S.htm

Kramer has been selling strat clones for 40+ years and a big reason they got popular in the 80s was because they were building guitars Fender wouldn't - they just had the same/similar body shape.

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.

FMIC likely cannot even properly identify the allegedly protected shape of the Strat because they sell multiple Stratocasters that have different body shapes and proportions. They may simply not be able to say "it's this thick", even, because they sell Strats with different thicknesses. They might not be able to say "it has these body contours" because they sell flat, edge-bound Stratocasters. The list goes on.

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.

Maybe the law should protect creative part of the shape (that doesn't affect the sound)? I do not know but I think that designing a good instrument is not easy and it is not cool that someone can just copy it without doing any work.

That is effectively what Fender are claiming they now have in Europe (off the back of a case that was not even argued because the vendor didn't turn up).

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 doesn't affect the sound

That would be the whole shape.

Haha I was going to say that but I thought, no, I don't need the downvotes. Lots of guitarists here (including me)

I do not think the exact shape has any influence, especially potentiometer or audio jack placement.

> I do not think the exact shape has any influence

Yes, that's what I said.

It influences playability, which is functionality. Fender's marketing advertised the shape as a functional feature: body carve for easier playing standing up, double cut for easier access to higher frets

72 years later?

This is exactly the argument that the lawyer for LSL guitars is making - who happens to be the same lawyer that beat Fender back in 2009 on behalf of the USPTO and cost them the copyright in the US :)

(Absolutely baller move for LSL to hire that guy)

Yep. Brutal.

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.

FWIW I think if it is true they also sent a letter to Ibanez — presumably about the AZES, which is the only thing really close — then that is where it gets interesting.

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.

Everything Fender's CEO said in that meeting was a lie to appease retailers

Ergonomics. Any solid-body guitar that's designed to be comfortable when played sitting or standing will converge on a strat-ish body shape. You can make a computer mouse in any shape, but the shape of a comfortable mouse is constrained by the shape of an average human palm.

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-...

But, for example, are those horns (?) necessary for ergonomics? Do the potentiometers and output jack have to be positioned like that? Does the pickguard has to be the same shape? I do not think so. Les Pauls have different shape and are pretty popular too.

> Ola Strandberg set out to design the most ergonomic guitar possible

It looks somewhat ... not how you expect the guitar to look.

> But, for example, are those horns (?) necessary for ergonomics?

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.

There's an article related to the headline linked at the top which explains it.

"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."

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