Fender's IP Reckoning Just Got Real 🎸

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Fender's attempt to tighten control around the Stratocaster body shape. Then I wrote about the backlash. Now the story has moved on again, because Thomann has entered the room, and that matters.

⚖️ From pressure to pushback

Not because Thomann is automatically right, or Fender automatically wrong. But because this is no longer a one-way conversation. For weeks, this story has largely been about pressure: legal letters, nervous brands, angry players, dealers wondering where S-style products stand, and smaller manufacturers asking themselves whether the fight was worth the cost.

That is how legal pressure often works. You do not always need to win in court to change behaviour. Sometimes the letter is enough. Sometimes uncertainty alone does the job. For a large company, a cease-and-desist is a problem to manage. For a small builder, it can feel existential.

But Thomann is not a small builder. This is one of the biggest musical instrument retailers in the world, with scale, resource, customer reach and, through Harley Benton, direct commercial exposure to the issue. That changes the balance. It also raises the question Fender should probably have asked much earlier: what happens when someone big enough to fight back decides not to roll over?

🇩🇪 The German problem

According to Thomann, Fender's recent enforcement activity is linked to a default judgment in Germany involving S-style guitars. That detail is significant. Thomann describes it as a judgment based on missed deadlines, in other words a procedural outcome rather than a contested ruling where the arguments were properly tested. It may carry legal force, but from an industry perspective it is very different from a landmark decision that settles things once and for all.

There is another important detail here. This started with a German judgment. Thomann is of course German... So Fender is not dealing with a distant retailer making noise from the sidelines. It is facing one of the most powerful MI businesses in Germany, on the same legal ground where this whole issue began which also happens to be Thomann's back yard. That feels like a serious strategic miscalculation.

Then there is the history. Thomann was founded in 1954. The Stratocaster launched in 1954. These two stories have been running alongside each other for more than 70 years. Thomann is not some unknown online seller that appeared last Tuesday with a container full of questionable copies. It has sold Fender instruments for decades. It has helped put Fender guitars into the hands of players across Europe. It has been a vital and integral part of Fender's commercial success story, not just a threat to it.

Hans Thomann put it directly: "We used to be a small music store ourselves and know exactly where we have come from. Many of those affected do not have the financial and legal means to conduct such a legal dispute. We therefore see it as our responsibility to have this matter clarified in court not only for our own company, but for all parties involved."

That gives the story a wider significance. The issue was never whether Fender has the right to protect its brand. Of course it does. Fake Fenders should be stopped. Counterfeit logos should be stopped. Deliberate passing-off should be stopped. Nobody serious in this industry should be defending guitars pretending to be something they are not.

But that was not really the argument then, and it is definitely not the argument now.

🎸 When a model becomes a category

The bigger question was always this: when does protecting an icon become trying to control a whole category?

The Stratocaster is not just another product. It became a platform, a visual language and a starting point. Over the decades, players changed it and builders responded. The Superstrat happened. Modern HSS guitars happened. Roasted necks, locking trems, stainless frets, compound radii and high-output humbuckers all became part of the wider S-style story, not because everyone was trying to make a fake Fender, but because guitar design evolves through use.

Thomann makes another point worth sitting with. The Stratocaster's shape was not purely an aesthetic choice. The upper horn provides balance. The cutaways allow access to the upper registers. The body contours make it more comfortable to hold and play. Form, in this case, followed function. You can have an argument about whether a design is protectable as art. It becomes a more complicated argument when the design is also ergonomics.

That is how categories are created. And once something becomes a category, pulling it back into one company's control is never straightforward. This is why Thomann's involvement matters beyond Thomann. The industry needs clarity. Retailers need to know what they can safely stock. Brands need to know what they can safely design. Distributors and manufacturers need to know where the line actually sits. Right now, they have noise, fear and speculation instead.

Thomann's challenge may finally force the wider question into a proper process. Where is the line between a counterfeit and a category product? Between protecting brand identity and restricting competition? Between design ownership and shared design language? These are not small questions. They sit right at the centre of how the guitar market works.

🧭 The line Fender needs to find

And this is where in my opinion at least Fender has to be careful. The company may believe it is protecting the Stratocaster, but the market is hearing something else. It is hearing control. It is hearing restriction. It is hearing a legacy brand trying to police the very ecosystem it helped create. That is why I used the phrase Ratner Moment in an previous piece. That risk has not gone away. A brand built on player loyalty cannot afford to look out of step with players, builders, retailers and dealers.

The sensible middle ground still seems obvious. Protect the Fender name. Protect the logo. Protect distinctive headstocks where legally recognised. Stop fake guitars being sold as genuine instruments. Focus enforcement on the worst offenders. But be very careful before treating every recognisable S-style body as an automatic infringement, because that is where brand protection starts to look like market control.

The irony is that Fender's influence is not weakened by the existence of S-style guitars. It is proven by them. Nobody is having this fight over forgotten designs. They are having it because the Stratocaster changed the electric guitar forever. That is the legacy. The question is whether Fender wants that legacy to feel open, influential and alive, or closed, controlled and contested.

Thomann's challenge matters because it turns private pressure into public scrutiny. It forces the bigger question into the open. It reminds the industry that legal pressure has limits, and that finding those limits sometimes requires someone willing to test them.

Fender helped create the modern electric guitar world. Now it has to decide whether it wants to lead that world, or police it.

Because the Stratocaster may belong to Fender.

But the guitar world it inspired belongs to everyone.

How do you think this is likely to now play out? 

As always I'd love to hear your thoughts...