Daniel Aronowitz — Why are there so many Fender clones?

 

If you’re a fan of electric guitars, you’ve probably noticed that there is a booming market for Fender clones but slim pickings when it comes to Gibson clones, at least in the US. The reason for this is actually pretty fascinating bit of history.

Visit any guitar store online or in person and you’ll find a wide range of brands offering their own take on Fender’s classic Stratocaster and Telecaster designs. From Harley Benton and Sire on the low end to Xotic and Suhr on the ultra high-end of the price-spectrum, there are boutique manufacturers building Strat and Tele clones that would be virtually indistinguishable from a real Fender if it weren’t for the logo and contour of the headstock. A large part of this comes down to the fact that when Leo Fender first created his iconic guitar designs in the 1950’s, he only filed design patents to protect his guitars from copy-cats, not trademarks. The important distinction here is that design patents expire in 15 years, whereas trademarks never expire. That was Fender’s first mistake but their second, and arguably their biggest mistake, was that once their design patent expired in 1968 they waited until 2004 to file a trademark. By that point, Fenders had been so widely copied by companies like Kramer, Ibanez, along with countless boutiques, that Fender had no legal standing to claim that their design was unique. The court denied Fender’s trademark application for the overall body design but allowed them to trademark only the headstock, which is why you’ll notice subtle variations in the headstock design across the range of Fender clones that are otherwise indistinguishable from genuine Strats and Teles.

The story is a bit different with Gibson. Just like Fender, Gibson waited decades to file trademark protections on their guitar designs. For instance, the Flying V wasn’t registered with the trademark office until 1997, a full 39 years after it was first designed. But, unlike Fender, the trademark office allowed Gibson to trademark their guitar designs. Ever since, they’ve aggressively pursued legal action against any manufacturer that comes remotely close to touching their designs. So what accounts for the difference? Why was Gibson be allowed a trademark while Fender wasn’t? Well for one, Fender style guitars are much easier to make. In terms of the high-level aesthetic, they’re essentially contoured slabs of wood held together with bolts. The simplicity of the design made it much easier for other manufacturers to scale up production of Fender-replicas. So, by the time Fender tried to file their trademarks in the early 2000’s, they had very little ground to stand on to claim that their design was somehow unique to them. Gibsons on the other hand require a lot more finesse to replicate. Take the Les Paul for instance: you have side binding, a two piece maple top that needs to be contoured, separate finishes for the front and back… By the late 90’s when Gibson filed their trademarks, there were only a handful of replica manufacturers capable of matching those specs. Of those, the biggest was Epiphone and Gibson chose to just buy them out instead of fighting them in court over the design. — Daniel Aronowitz


Originally published at http://danielaronowitz.wordpress.com on February 14, 2024.