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I just heard Fender lost the trademark case they were pursuing for their body shapes.

wait for the new danelectro stratocaster!

Well they still have the headstock trademark for what it's worth but they were trying to go a step further.

What I don't understand is how Gibson has a trademark on the LP body dimensions, but a Strat and Tele don't get the same trademark for Fender. They're all equally iconic and copied. I would say the Les Paul has been copied more over the years than the Tele but not the Strat, which IMO is by far the most copied.

Maybe this will knockdown Gibson's trademark now?

damn, how the hell does that work???

That's a bit unfair.

I think they should be allowed to trademark the body shape, they designed it so why not? Is this not going to pave the way for more counterfeit guitars?

In other news, Gibson suck.

Gibson bothered to trademark/patent the body shape a number of years back.

Fender never bothered to from what I understand until recently and now because of the INTERNETZ and the big number of small luthiers they saw what Fender was trying to do and made a challenge.

So it might be a case of Gibson just having made a smart business move while Fender was slacking on their macking. But if part of the ruling was that the shape were "generic" and not simply that too much time has passed, how does the Les Paul not get the same treatment.

I actually wish they had won that case because it would push the Asian makers to, you know, DESIGN A NEW FUCKING GUITAR.

I'm so sick and tired of walking into shops and seeing nothing but $150 strat copies.

But they would probably just do a terrible take on a strat design, like you also see. Countless budget guitars that are almost a strat shape but not quite.

This is also good because now all those people that make bodies won't have to pay fees to Fender for body shapes. That would have made buying a start or tele body more expensive.

Link to the case.

http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno= ... OPP&eno=13

some big names in that case:
warmoth
spector
tradition
tom anderson
schecter
wd
sadowsky
esp
lakland
tobias
peavey

Of course, other companies would make shitty strat derivatives that looked nothing like a strat. People wouldn't but them and they'd be forced to design something new.

It sucks to go into a store and see half the wall space taken by strats.

jcyphe wrote:if part of the ruling was that the shape were "generic" and not simply that too much time has passed, how does the Les Paul not get the same treatment.

yea, like how Bayer has lost their trademark on "aspirin" because it's become such a common term. the strat might be getting close to that status. the les paul may end up getting the same treatment but they were not the subject of this case.

I think that's kind of bullshit if that really was the reason they lost this. I mean yea it's a very common guitar and made by many guitar makers but come on; I would think it's clear to almost everyone somewhat familiar with popular music that that guitar shape is a FENDER STRATOCASTER. not anything else. they should definitely have the rights to it.

but maybe I'm wrong. the average person might just see it and think, "electric guitar". the brand doesn't really matter to them. It's hard for me to say, my perspective is a bit skewed. however, I think all musicians would know and they're the actual consumers buying the instruments.

mage wrote: yea, like how Bayer has lost their trademark on "aspirin" because it's become such a common term.

Actually Bayer lost its trademark on "Aspirin" because of The Great War

Wikipedia wrote:As part of war reparations specified in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles following Germany's surrender after World War I, Aspirin (along with Heroin) lost its status as a registered trademark in France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where it became a generic name and can be spelled in lower case. Today, "aspirin" is a generic word in Australia, Argentina, Britain, France, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa and the United States. Aspirin remains a registered trademark of Bayer in Germany, Canada, Mexico, and in over 80 other countries, where the first letter of its name should be capitalized and used only in reference to and on ASA products manufactured and marketed by Bayer.

DuoSonicBoy wrote:I actually wish they had won that case because it would push the Asian makers to, you know, DESIGN A NEW FUCKING GUITAR.

I'm so sick and tired of walking into shops and seeing nothing but $150 strat copies.

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