Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[Jim Shine]

Re: GMW loses???

"Hmmm... what will Fender do with the case of G&L?? G&L is an embarassment for Fender, since many highly visible publications, forums and even artists always assert that if you want a real vintage quality/vibe strat, go to G&L. That isn't really true, cuz G&L's are very different feeling (12" radius, larger frets, un Fender neck profiles, etc) but thats the perception."

Well, if they did go for G&L, then G&L would have to go back to Leo's original plan. Leo really didn't want to do the ASAT and Legacy in the Tele and Strat shapes. It was a business decision to make those shapes. He preferred the F100, S-500, SC3, and Invader shapes.

[Firebird V]

Re: GMW loses???

I have always heard that that 7 things had to be changed from the original design and than it would not be copyright infringement. What is the law. Does anyone know?

[Chameleonfong]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[ QUOTE ]

also, with the internet, and forums like these, more of the little guys are going to get shots fired at them. i'm told that part of the reason lee lost his dealer status (which he was planning on not renewing) and got into strathead heat was over pictures posted here. we weren't the main reason, but icing on the cake.

sully

[/ QUOTE ]

If the FMIC are using JFC as a reason to drop Lee's or any other dealer's dealership (using JCF as an business link), and preventing us from voicing ourselves, can't we just "banned" them from the forum? It's not like are we assocciated with them (unless there were some changes when the forum moved).

BTW, admins, feel free to delete this is if you think i'm off the line.


My two cents
Fong

[RP]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe trim off the headstock from your pics here and there.

[/ QUOTE ]

Need to trim off the body in the pictures now, too, since Fender is going after "their" body style.

I guess we'll see a lot of pictures of fretboards in the future (though I assume someone invented dot inlays and will be going after that soon, too).

[Chameleonfong]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Maybe trim off the headstock from your pics here and there.

[/ QUOTE ]

Need to trim off the body in the pictures now, too, since Fender is going after "their" body style.

I guess we'll see a lot of pictures of fretboards in the future (though I assume someone invented dot inlays and will be going after that soon, too).

[/ QUOTE ]

Once somebody gets the trademark ownership for the dot inlay, i guess we'll be posting pictures of the tone/volume knobs, tuners, trems, back plates of our guitars. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Bahahahahaw!!
Fong

[j2379]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

this is wild. What If FMIC & J/C decide to go after all strat type copies then they would be the owner of the only 2 companies making higher end USA strat types. charvel being the rear routed hot rods, jackson being the smaller soloist/dinky shapes & fender with top routed strats.

& with all the strat copies out there why bother. almost every company at some time has put out some sort of strat. why go after them now, sure i can see headstock trademark lic. but the strat shape. its silly almost as silly as not letting duncan make creme pickups.

[dinkyjacksonman]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

How about Floyd Rose stops giving license to all these companies who make copy ones with license?
How about Gibson starts sueing all other companies who use 3+3 tuners headstock design?
What about if Martin sues all other acoustic companies?

This will be real crazy after all.

[skidd]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

It will get worse before it gets better. These are big companies with deep pockets.

[Accept2]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

Someone just mentioned the word Lentz in a thread on the FDP. It took a couple of minutes, and the thread with 16 replies was deleted immediately. That forum is amazing, like a trip thru time back to the USSR..........

[Jimi D]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[ QUOTE ]
Someone just mentioned the word Lentz in a thread on the FDP. It took a couple of minutes, and the thread with 16 replies was deleted immediately. That forum is amazing, like a trip thru time back to the USSR..........

[/ QUOTE ]
FDP? The Fascist Dictator`s Page? Say only nice things about Fedner over there, or Msr. Vert and his bully boys will ban your ass [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] 'Course, if that means you actually spend some time on other guitar forums, it will be the best thing that ever happened to you - hell, you might even be exposed to different points of view than that of The Management - but I digress...

[img]/images/graemlins/rant.gif[/img]
I used to own six or seven Fenders - now I own none, and I'm keeping it that way. These guys are corporate bullies - they're behaving like complete jerks, and I vote with my wallet. Behringer, Fender, PRS (bad move to stop the lefties, boys! My son's a southpaw!) and many others are on my ever widening $hit list = No $$$ for you!! [img]/images/graemlins/nono.gif[/img] Doesn't matter: you can find great US-made gear out there for very reasonable production prices (as opposed to scarey boutique prices) from companies like Ernie Ball, G&L, Heritage, Hamer and others. Why buy Fender if they want to do business like this?
[img]/images/graemlins/rant.gif[/img]

[Souldigger]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Someone just mentioned the word Lentz in a thread on the FDP. It took a couple of minutes, and the thread with 16 replies was deleted immediately. That forum is amazing, like a trip thru time back to the USSR..........

[/ QUOTE ]
FDP? The Fascist Dictator`s Page? Say only nice things about Fedner over there, or Msr. Vert and his bully boys will ban your ass [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] 'Course, if that means you actually spend some time on other guitar forums, it will be the best thing that ever happened to you - hell, you might even be exposed to different points of view than that of The Management - but I digress...

[img]/images/graemlins/rant.gif[/img]
I used to own six or seven Fenders - now I own none, and I'm keeping it that way. These guys are corporate bullies - they're behaving like complete jerks, and I vote with my wallet. Behringer, Fender, PRS (bad move to stop the lefties, boys! My son's a southpaw!) and many others are on my ever widening $hit list = No $$$ for you!! [img]/images/graemlins/nono.gif[/img] Doesn't matter: you can find great US-made gear out there for very reasonable production prices (as opposed to scarey boutique prices) from companies like Ernie Ball, G&L, Heritage, Hamer and others. Why buy Fender if they want to do business like this?
[img]/images/graemlins/rant.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Word!

[YetAnotherOne]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[ QUOTE ]
These guys are corporate bullies - they're behaving like complete jerks, and I vote with my wallet. ... Why buy Fender if they want to do business like this?

[/ QUOTE ]

Fender's doing nothing more than protecting their property. What they did with Lentz is no different than what you or I would do if we came home and found someone carrying our favorite axe out our front door. It's never made sense to me that folks are so willing to rail on a company for doing nothing more than protecting the company's property.

The standard reply to that concept is usually along the lines of, "Well, it's wrong because big bad Company A has lots of money and Company B are just little guys who weren't really a threat and don't have as much money. It's just not fair." If anyone wants to believe that, fine but realize that to be internally consistent you'd have to also consider the economic difference between yourself and my hypothetical burglar before deciding on whether you'd attempt to regain possession of your favorite axe or just let him carry it away. Odd that I've never met anyone who thought that sort of logic should apply to them personally but have met *many* who nonetheless see no problem with it when it's applied to "corporations". [img]/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Jimi D]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

YAO ~ your "logic" is not valid, nor is your analogy of a burglar. Fender has decided 50 years later to use huge corporate muscle to bully small builders out of building guitar models they have been using for years and years, building successful small businesses by hard work and word of mouth. The current corporate entity of FMIC had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with designing these guitar body styles. NOTHING! Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton and others can validly make that claim, but not the existing FMIC. If you want to use a burglar analogy, then this would be like me putting all my belongings out on the street fifty years ago, and leaving them there for fifty years, and then the guy that bought my house twenty years ago starts running around and saying that anyone who owns a couch that looks like mine did must give it to him because I was the first one to own a couch like that... It's ridiculous!

And that's why they're going after the small guys - builders that cannot afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees a court fight would cost on this issue. Lets see Fender tackle someone like G&L or Samick - someone with a sufficiently vested interest who will fight them in court! I would bet that Fender will not find a court to support these claims, but until someone can afford to challenge them, they'll get away with crap like this, and have toady little corporate apologists claim that all they're doing is "protecting their interests" - like the largest domestic guitar manufacturer in North America (second largest in the world?) has to crush some guy that builds fewer guitars in a YEAR than Fender does in a DAY to "protect their interests"? What a complete crock...

And finally, since when is that kind of behaviour "right" or "proper". Even if Fender could defend their bullying tactics in a court room (and I don't for a minute believe that they would be able to), the Law is a legal tool of measure, not a moral one. I don't want to deal with companies that behave in a manner I would not accept from my children. That's my choice and I stick to it.

[Drsracing]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

[ QUOTE ]
YAO ~ your "logic" is not valid, nor is your analogy of a burglar. Fender has decided 50 years later to use huge corporate muscle to bully small builders out of building guitar models they have been using for years and years, building successful small businesses by hard work and word of mouth. The current corporate entity of FMIC had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with designing these guitar body styles. NOTHING! Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton and others can validly make that claim, but not the existing FMIC. If you want to use a burglar analogy, then this would be like me putting all my belongings out on the street fifty years ago, and leaving them there for fifty years, and then the guy that bought my house twenty years ago starts running around and saying that anyone who owns a couch that looks like mine did must give it to him because I was the first one to own a couch like that... It's ridiculous!

And that's why they're going after the small guys - builders that cannot afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees a court fight would cost on this issue. Lets see Fender tackle someone like G&L or Samick - someone with a sufficiently vested interest who will fight them in court! I would bet that Fender will not find a court to support these claims, but until someone can afford to challenge them, they'll get away with crap like this, and have toady little corporate apologists claim that all they're doing is "protecting their interests" - like the largest domestic guitar manufacturer in North America (second largest in the world?) has to crush some guy that builds fewer guitars in a YEAR than Fender does in a DAY to "protect their interests"? What a complete crock...

And finally, since when is that kind of behaviour "right" or "proper". Even if Fender could defend their bullying tactics in a court room (and I don't for a minute believe that they would be able to), the Law is a legal tool of measure, not a moral one. I don't want to deal with companies that behave in a manner I would not accept from my children. That's my choice and I stick to it.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the best thing said in this thread, I could see if the did this even 20 years ago, but now??? It's just stupid. [img]/images/graemlins/sleep.gif[/img]

[yard dawg]

Re: Fender tells Lentz to Cease and Desist...

This is pure greed...eventually the only guitar makers will be fender and gibson again...PRS will still be there too...This is crazy...I guess we now know why the 15% price increase..its to pay the lawyers...the only reason a GMW or suhr etc is there is because they make better quality stuff for a cheaper price...If Gibson and Fender would make a better product for a better price people wouldnt buy a lookalike..But I guess if I was a fender/gibson exec Id sue too after all they need to make there mansion payments too