Suhr won court case against Fender

[tomjackson]

Well the irony there is that if Fender had of won G&L would not be able to continue with their guitars based on Strat's and Tele's, I wonder how Leo Fender would have felt about that?

[Copperhead]

Oh, I agree with the decision. It's too late to go back 40+ years. The conversation went along the lines of, could you imagine a world with absolutely no Tele or Strat body copies, I mean none?
The way it is, is a good thing. Ibanez, et al guitar companies have provided variations on a theme that Fender never would have built. Perhaps the universal  employment of the guitar as THE rock and blues instrument, even the wide ranging influence of these styles of music would have been limited if the exploration and creativity of the artisans designing and building guitars were prevented from rooting their ideas on the foundation that is Fender. We all stand on the shoulders of another, greatness is achieved many times from building on a pioneer's groundbreaking work.

[Elliot]

Yeah the Fender company were dumb for not trademarking the shape of the strat and tele - but in the 50s there was no one like Suhr or Tom Anderson to compete with you.   It also shows how Leo Fender, the Henry Ford of the electric guitar world, was a notorious skin flint when it came to paying money for things like patents (or wood or machinery or office cups for that matter) - in fact its a wonder his instruments were'nt made out of chip board given his view of production economics.

[Copperhead]

Hahaha - The whole culture of the 50's in the US is worlds away from where we are now brother!

[dave_mc]

Fender's main problem is that they're trying to shut the stable door.... about 40 years after the horse has bolted, died of natural causes and been sent to the glue factory.  :|

+1

and also, the fact that fender are only concerned with suing the companies which it sees as a threat- i.e. those companies who can make a better guitar for a better price. they should put all that litigating money into making better guitars.

and i agree that they've become generic by now. even if they hadn't, copyrights and patents etc. lapse after a certain amount of time.

[nfe]

On a related note, had a Suhr 10th Anniversary in the hop today as it was in to get a set of Rebel Yells.

Great sounding guitar, great player, but had a REALLY clunky selector and wobbly pots, it had arrived with the chap one day previously straight from Suhr  :?

Still, that aside, hell of a guitar.

[HTH AMPS]

I think its a wrong decision myself - Leo Fender and team actually designed those guitar shapes - they were shapes that no one else had even thought of before (unlike Gibson, who just cut away the spanish guitar shape) - the Fender team put years of design into those shapes and unimaginative bandwagon jumpers like Suhr and others just came along and copied it cynically to make money out of someone else's design genius and then charged a premium for making guitars someone else sweated over and risked their entire livelihood over.  That seems like theft to me, even if Fender are now a multinational (they were'nt in 1959 or 1983!).

broadly speaking, I thought the same thing - Fender designed the Strat and Tele from scratch, it's their product.  back in the 50s/60s I think that companies wanted to set one another appart from the competition by coming up with their own designs so protecting the body shape etc. probably wasn't an issue.

that aside, Fender started making rotten guitars through the 70s and I can see why the boutique builders started to get more and more business - it's about being able to get something familiar, but tweaked the way players want (to a higher spec).

all that said, I think it's fair play to copy the classic shapes now - none of them have made a fuss and protected their designs well enough so it's tough shite now.

maybe Fender and Gibson should start making a better product and show the small guys how it's done to regain their 'lost' market share.  of course we all know they won't because it's all about the bottom line and what level of QC is 'acceptable' rather than aiming to be the best.