Ex-desert rat now happily living in the pacific northwest. USCG/Air Guard veteran. Heathen. Dorkasaurus. I make stupid gifs of things like food dancing. He/him. Tumblr Old.
I want to conduct a quick poll because I believe a lot of the folks I interact with here represent a pretty good cross-section of the American (probably North American) population.
Have you heard about the recent legal issue regarding Fender guitars?
Yes
No
Voting ended onJun 2
No more context than that. Please don't search before you answer. Just a yes or no answer, please. Oh, and reblog for a larger sample size, if you desire.
I am particularly interested in hearing from non-guitarists if they have heard of this and how they did.
To follow up on this, the results were much as I expected. Most of y'all don't know about what Fender Musical Instrument Corporation is up to.
TL;DR version: FMIC is sending out cease and desist letter to companies that are making guitars that look like the Fender Stratocaster even though the Strat body shape was found to be in the public domain in a 2009 U.S. court ruling. The recent action has to do with a German court decision in December 2025.
The lengthy version below the cut:
I make a point to distinguish FMIC from just plain ol' Fender because FMIC is basically an investment group whose majority owner is Servco, a company that had nothing to do with musical instruments until it invested in FMIC. They became the majority holder in 2020.
FMIC is itself the largest guitar company in the world, and they also own other guitar brands. The most obvious is Squier which Fender acquired in the 80s and turned into their budget brand. Other brands FMIC own include Jackson, Charvel, Hamer, and Tacoma, among others. They are partnered with Gretsch and EVH guitars as the manufacturer and distributor of their guitars, they just don't own the brand.
Alright, enough background on FMIC.
When people talk about guitar lawsuits, most people who care about this kind of thing think of Gibson. Gibson Guitars are notoriously litigious, but companies who are attempting to protect a trademark have to be in order to maintain the trademark. But because Gibson is always going to court (with mixed results), the guitar community shits on them for doing so AND because Gibson and Fender are the two big guys in the guitar market, Fender has always kind of been thought of as the "nicer" company.
Then in December 2025 news came of a ruling in a German court that Fender had won a case against a manufacturer it claimed was making copies of its Stratocaster shape. In May 2026, Fender's law firm began sending out cease and desist letters to different manufacturers citing this ruling.
The problem? The manufacturer Fender sued was a fly-by-night Chinese company that didn't even show up to court. The case that Fender "won" was a summary ruling.
Additionally, the demands from the cease and desist letter became public and they were ... a little crazy. First, they demanded that these companies cease to sell their guitars in Germany and the EU (since that is the only area this court has jurisdiction). That's the sane part. They also demanded that all of those guitars that had been sold in that area had to be recalled and destroyed along with all the current stock in stores. They also demanded that stores that sold these guitars had to turn over a list of all the customers who bought them. Finally, they demanded some extreme sum of money for damages.
I'm not a lawyer and I'm not going to pretend to be one and I'm not going to attempt to parse the legalese of the issue. Suffice to say that the guitar community has not reacted well to this.
The biggest problem with all of it is that trademarks require you to file for one within a reasonable amount of time of the creation of the thing you're wanting to trademark. Fender waited 70 years to try and do so. Gibson has suffered court losses for the same issue. These cases sour guitarists on the brand, and that, more than anything is what these companies are now -- a brand. They're not trying to just sell you a guitar; they want to sell you a lifestyle. A litigious investment group is not the lifestyle a rock and roller wants to invest in. Nor is it the lifestyle brand a 50-something dude who's trying to recapture some feeling from his youth by buying some of the things he could never have in his youth wants to follow.
This is a fantastic summary and once again, Private Equity ruins everything. I had no idea that so many formerly shining brands were under their umbrella too.
A TBThursday from somewhere between 1996-1998. I was at Coast Guard Station Freeport, Texas to work on their computer systems. Freeport was ~hour from Galveston. The officer in-charge of the station was an E-8/Senior Chief Boatswains Mate, but I had known him when he was an E-6/1st class Boatswain at Station Galveston back in 1989 so it was always a small world in the CG. IIRC the boarding teams had Polaroid cameras in their kits, and since the film would expire - they'd just use up the old stuff on random pictures, so that is where this came from!
Fucking joy. We got a rando looking notice in the mail a couple weeks ago from the postmaster that our ZIP was changing. Which sucks for a few reasons but it is necessary I guess with a part of our city expanding rapidly (like 20-30k people growth expected in the next few years). But losing my Informed Delivery for a while is a major suck, I rely on it for when things are inbound - can see what to expect in the mail and having a group mailbox that is on a street, if it were to be broken into (which has happened in our neighborhood) I'd know if something got stolen.
Latest retro find. A pair of 1977 Cambro Camtrays from eBay for a defunct restaurant/franchise “havasalad”. From what I could suss on them, it was a salad bar stand alone at college/university cafeterias and maybe some mall or shopping center food courts. They’re more yellow than the picture does justice to. About 14” so a perfect lunch tray and sturdy fiberglass.
logic behind the teeth one is that I suspect a large amount of people answering "yes" are answering so bc of wisdom teeth removal or other dental work.
prguitarman
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
vaporwave
jbbartram-illu
