“Reinforces the value of originality”: Fender secures legal ruling to protect the Stratocaster body design

Fender has secured what it’s calling a significant legal victory against a Chinese guitar manufacturer, announcing a ruling that it says will establish “broad legal protection for Fender’s iconic Stratocaster”.

In a press release, Fender announced it had won a court case in the Regional Court of Dusseldorf, which has created “enforceable rights against any guitars using the Stratocaster body shape that are manufactured, sold or distributed into Germany or other countries of the European Union – regardless of where those guitars are produced.”

In essence, Fender says, this creates legal precedence and “reinforces its ability to protect its designs in global commerce”.

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The ruling comes after a court battle with Chinese-based instrument manufacturer, Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co., which was found to be unlawfully reproducing the Stratocaster body design.

The company was on the global online retail platform AliExpress, and shipped its products into Germany.

The Dusseldorf court deemed that the Stratocaster design qualified as a copyrighted work of applied art under German and European law, thus prohibiting Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co. from manufacturing, offering or distributing guitars featuring the Stratocaster body shape in Germany and the EU.

Any future violations may result in fines of up to €250,000 per infringement, or up to six months’ imprisonment if fines cannot be enforced, subject to statutory limits.

Fender says this case does not hope to "restrict innovation or healthy competition within the guitar industry" but rather "represents targeted enforcement against clear cases of infringement”.

“The Stratocaster guitar is one of the most recognizable instrument designs in the history of music,” comments Edward “Bud” Cole, CEO of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. “Protecting the integrity of Fender’s iconic designs is essential to preserving the legacy of the artists and builders who shaped them.

“This decision reinforces the value of originality and ensures that the authenticity players associate with Fender continues for generations to come.”

The ruling comes 17 years after Fender was famously unsuccessful in its attempts to make its Stratocaster, Telecaster and Precision guitar body shapes a trademark in the US, decades after the designs were first produced.

That litigation process lasted five years, and demonstrated that countless companies had used the body shapes that Fender had sought to trademark. In the end, the courts ruled that the Stratocaster shape was “so common that it is depicted as a generic electric guitar in a dictionary”.

That, of course, was the result of decades’ worth of Stratocaster copies flooding the market going largely unchallenged.

This latest ruling, though, is concerned with copyright infringement, establishing the Stratocaster as a “copyrighted work of art… rather than purely functional design”. In other words, not just a generic functional tool, but a design based on “original creative expression”.

Any model available in Germany or Europe (the ruling doesn't extend to the US) that’s deemed to be infringing on this could potentially fall foul of the ruling.

Just how extensively that ruling will be enforced or applied in the EU retail space remains to be seen, particular when it comes to larger, more established builders that sell in Germany and the EU.

That said, the ruling does stress that “offering infringing products for sale into Germany or other countries of the EU is sufficient to establish liability, regardless of where a manufacturer or seller is based”.

Guitar World has approached Fender for comment.