Fender CEO Edward ‘Bud’ Cole has addressed the fallout from the company’s cease-and-desist campaign against makers of S-style guitars, admitting that it could have been handled better.
In a recent interview with YouTuber Mary Spender, Cole argues that Fender should have opened talks with certain companies ahead of sending the cease-and-desist letters.
“If I could go back in time with what I have heard, and what I know now, this would have been done very differently, and I think that’s very important,” said Cole.
Letters from Fender’s legal representatives were sent to a wide array of guitar brands, from small independent boutique companies, such as LsL, who were the first to go public, to the world’s largest musical company, Yamaha, and German gear retail giant Thomann, who own the budget brand Harley Benton and stock a range of S-style guitars. Cole said there were sound legal reason why the cease-and-desists were sent
The cat was officially among the pigeons. Thomann launched a countersuit. The reaction was fierce. The ramifications for the guitar industry are huge, and yet so much remains unclear. Just what constitutes an infringement of the Stratocaster design? What defines the Stratocaster design, beyond the headstock that is already a licensed trademark?
Cole speaks with Spender for an 90-plus minutes and yet does not spell that out. He can’t. This will be a matter for the courts to decide.
But the can of worms was opened in March, when the Regional Court of Düsseldorf awarded Fender full copyright protection of the Stratocaster as a “work of applied art” in the EU. The case had been brought against Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co, which was selling S-style guitars on the online retail platform AliExpress.
The ruling was made in absentia. AliExpress did not turn up. Some critics said that this was a cynical move from Fender, that the Chinese company was never going to turn up. Cole pushes back on this, arguing that the judge presided over “72 pages” of evidence before arriving at a decision.
Although Cole regretted how the cease-and-desist campaign was initially conducted, he argues that Fender’s efforts to protect the design of the Stratocaster will ultimately “improve” the industry. He cites the 18 agreements it has reached with other companies to change their designs as evidence that Fender’s approach is working. As per Bloomberg’s report, Fender is working with 32 companies.
Cole does not mention which brands. To do so would be to potentially identify S-style guitars – or double-cutaway electrics to use a less contentious term – that are considered to be “okay” by Fender, thus offering a definition of the Stratocaster.
But he does speaks about reassuring brands whose double-cutaway electric guitar designs as “materially different” from the Stratocaster, but for the others, he says Fender wants to “help” them change their designs.
“We want to have that conversation to over time to help them, or inspire them, or work with them to push their design further, so they have their own unique design to the naked eye,” he said.
“We have to work together, but if they’re willing, that over time pushes their design to something that’s uniquely theirs, and I think our industry will be better because of it. ”
But to whose naked eye? That’s the question, and we might have to wait for the conclusion of Thomann’s lawsuit with Fender to find out.
