Trademarks in the guitar industry

A trademark can be a name, a logo, a product shape or any visual element that is distinctive of a product and distinguishes it from its competitors. Famous elements are “the swoosh” of Nike and the Coca-Cola contour bottle. In DavidonTM’s blog “Three Chords and a Lawsuit: A Brief History of Guitars and Trademarks” of Jeffrey Davidson, trademarks in the (highly competitive) guitar industry are analyzed.

The first infringement case involved Fender Guitars. Fender originally named its current Telecaster guitar “the Broadcaster”. During the transition period, Fender sold a small number of Broadcaster guitars without a sticker. These no-name guitars are rare and premium goods in the vintage guitar market.

However, Gibson and Fender, the market leaders and manufacturers of the legendary and iconic models, chose not the challenge copycats, unless they are virtually identical to their originals. Most copy guitars are low-cost and foreign-made.

Ibanez started out as copyist and was faced with so many infringement threats, that it started to develop its own models. In true poetic justices, their own models are now targeted by copycats.

To protect themselves from copycats, elite guitar started to certain specific elements of the guitars. Gibson energetically enforces its rights in the "open book" design at the top of its guitar headstocks. Fender protects headstock shapes, and especially those of its iconic Stratocaster and Telecaster models. Paul Reed Smith protects its headstock, its signature “birds in flight” fretboard inlays, and the beveled edge of its cutaway. Rickenbacker has protected both body shapes and headstock shapes of its guitars for decades now.

It shows that the (legal) devil is indeed in the details…

(Illustration by Long for Robotech, the role-playing game, showing the LV-1200 Stratocaster Bass Guitar)