Fender hits used guitar store with cease-and-desist over alleged trademark infringement

Fender has issued a cease and desist letter to an Australian guitar store over alleged trademark infringements.

On Instagram, vintage and used guitar store Cool Old Guitars revealed it had received a cease-and-desist letter over its apparent use of Fender terminology across its website and product descriptions.

As a store, Cool Old Guitars specializes in 1970s and 1980s “lawsuit era” guitars, stocking brands such as Fernandes, Greco, ESP and Tokai, all of which built their own Strat and Tele clones.

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In its site taxonomy and product descriptions, Cool Old Guitar employed terms such as “Stratocaster” and “Telecaster” to collectively describe such instruments – for instance, using the phrase ‘Fernandes Stratocaster’.

It’s a practice that has drawn the ire of Fender’s legal team, which has issued Cool Old Guitars a cease-and-desist (excerpts of which were shared by KDH) that calls out the store for infringing on Fender’s trademarks.

“Fender is concerned that the manner in which COG is presenting and offering for sale its second-hand stock infringes Fender’s trade mark rights and is likely to mislead, deceive or otherwise confuse Australian guitarists into thinking they are buying Fender instruments when in fact they are purchasing instruments manufactured by unauthorised third parties,” the letter reads.

“This seems to be because of how COG presents Fender instruments alongside third parties instruments that mimic our client’s distinctive guitars and parts thereof including but not limited to body shapes, headstocks, and other distinctive attributes.”

Fender’s efforts to enforce its long-standing trademarks here are not part of the same legal campaign that has attempted to police a default copyright ruling concerning the Stratocaster body shape.

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In May, Fender sent cease-and-desist letters to a number of EU and US-based guitar makers, as part of a high-profile Stratocaster copyright dispute that targeted PRS, LsL Instruments and Harley Benton, among others. Thomann, the world's largest music retailer, is now suing Fender in response.

That case is a separate legal matter, concerned with trademark infringement rather than copyright protection. Fender owns the trademarks for "Stratocaster" and "Telecaster", and as per the cease-and-desist issued to Cool Old Guitars, has taken issue with them being incorrectly applied.

The letter adds, “Given COG is not an Authorised Fender Distributor and our client does not have a relationship with and has never authorised or licensed COG’s use or sale of goods under or by reference to Fender’s trade marks, one can only conclude that COG have deliberately and wilfully engaged in the above action with a view to leveraging Fender’s significant reputation and valuable intellectual property rights.”

Cool Old Guitars has been approached for comment. Fender declined to comment.