Speaker
Charlie Harding
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
The US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled in 2009 that the Stratocaster body shape had undergone 'genericization' and could not be trademarked by Fender.
Fender won a lawsuit in Düsseldorf, Germany, by default judgment against a Chinese AliExpress seller who didn't appear in court, establishing Stratocaster design copyright under German and EU law.
Gibson was granted exclusive rights to the silhouette of the Les Paul guitar body in 1993, which Fender cited as precedent for its own Stratocaster claims.
Although the Stratocaster was developed in 1954, Fender did not attempt to claim a trademark over its body shape until 2003, nearly 50 years later.
The US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board found the Stratocaster body so common it is depicted as the generic electric guitar in the dictionary.
Fender developed the Stratocaster in 1954 but waited until 2003 to seek a trademark — and was rejected in 2009. US courts ruled the shape had undergone 'genericization': it's so ubiquitous it appears as the default electric guitar in the dictionary.
In one of the first major dupe legal battles, Ugg sued Quince over cheaper boots that looked like theirs. The jury agreed the designs were similar — then invalidated Ugg's design patent anyway, ruling it shouldn't have been issued in the first place.
People can't afford $50,000 Birkins or $400 Lululemon sets, so buying a dupe feels like justice. But others argue dupe culture exploits workers, kills small creators, and rewires our expectations of what things should cost. The debate is as much moral as it is economic.
Dupe discovery has been baked directly into the platforms people already use. Amazon's AI lets you describe a product in text and generates an image to find matches. TikTok highlights products in any paused video. Dupe.com reverse-searches any product URL. Finding a cheaper lookalike is now a two-second task.
Gibson was granted exclusive rights to the Les Paul body silhouette in 1993. Fender argues they deserve the same protection for the Stratocaster — but US courts disagree because the Strat has become the default image of electric guitar itself. That legal gap is what Fender is now trying to fill with a German ruling.
Leo Fender designed the Stratocaster with bolt-on necks and modular components, inspired by Ford's manufacturing, so players could easily repair and modify it. Jimi Hendrix played it upside down, Eddie Van Halen gutted and repainted his. That design philosophy of openness is precisely what makes it so hard to legally protect.
Dupe culture is the limitless internet-enabled ability to find a cheaper copy of whatever you actually want. It's spread from fashion to food, guitars to vacations — someone even marketed a different Greek island as a 'Santorini dupe.' And the social stigma around buying fakes has essentially vanished.
Fender leveraged a default judgment from a Düsseldorf court to send cease-and-desist letters demanding small guitar makers destroy their instruments and pay reparations. Guitar YouTube erupted, calling it a PR catastrophe that would haunt Fender for years.
After US courts rejected Fender's trademark claims, Fender found a more favorable forum in Düsseldorf. German and EU intellectual property law treats product design differently — and a default judgment against a no-show Chinese seller became Fender's legal weapon to brandish across the world.
Social media platforms actively incentivize duplication: the same sounds, dances, edits, and formats get rewarded. The internet's content dupe machine is now mirroring itself in our physical purchasing habits — filling our homes with products we didn't even realize were copies.
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