Does Fender Own the Stratocaster Design? Inside a Legal Feud Dividing the Global Guitar Business

Trending on Billboard This past May, worldwide musical instrument companies including Yamaha and PRS Guitars received cease-and-desist letters from Munich. The documents, authored by a group of German lawyers, stated that Fender Musical Instruments had newly acquired copyright protection over the iconic Stratocaster electric guitar design. And they demanded that non-Fender-produced Strat-shaped guitars be immediately pulled from the European market. Fender’s letters had immediate ripple effects across the global musical instrument business. Some companies agreed to work with Fender and change their guitar designs. But others have since retained their own attorneys and fought back, spurring litigation that will test the strength of Fender’s intellectual property right assertions. Related “Our client has every right to continue to sell its guitars with Strat-style guitar bodies, whenever and wherever it so chooses, as does the entire [musical instrument] industry on a worldwide basis,” wrote an attorney representing some of Fender’s opponents in a May response. “Efforts by your client to bully competitors based on misrepresentations and overstatements are anti-competitive.” To fully grasp this brewing legal war requires looking into the past, to a series of prior legal proceedings that stretch back nearly 20 years. It turns out Fender has long been warring with much of the music instrument business over the Strat shape, and the battle has extended from the U.S. trademark tribunal to a German courtroom. Two Court Cases, Two Decades Apart Fender first began selling the Stratocaster — a model of double cutaway, S-shaped electric guitars — in the 1950s. The so-called “Strat” was a huge success, and scores of other guitar manufacturers soon began pumping out their own instruments based on the same double cutaway design. It was in 2003 that Fender first tried to stop what it viewed as copycats by filing to federally trademark the Strat shape in the United States. Seventeen guitar manufacturers and distributors opposed Fender’s application, and the companies were mired in litigation for years. The case was decided against Fender in 2009, when the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) rejected the trademark registration. In that 2009 ruling, TTAB ruled that Fender had forfeited its right to claim trademark protection over the Strat by waiting 50 years to police the alleged infringement. Within that time, the federal tribunal said, the Strat shape had become so ubiquitous in the guitar world that consumers did not view it as connected to Fender — thus rendering the shape “generic” and “non-distinctive,” legal statuses that bar trademark protection in the U.S. Related TTAB noted, for example, that Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen both played Sadowsky Strat guitars, and a Tom Anderson Guitarworks’ Strat was featured on The Simpsons. Also, in a 1987 edition of the Random House Dictionary, an image of the Strat shape was featured for the definition of the word “guitar.” “The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that these configurations are so common in the industry that they cannot identify source,” wrote TTAB in the decision. Things were quiet on the legal front for a long while following TTAB’s ruling. Fender and its competitors both continued to sell guitars in the Strat shape, and neither side went to court over the issue for more than 15 years. But that changed in 2025, when Fender initiated a new intellectual property lawsuit over the Strat against a Chinese guitar seller named Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments. This time, the forum was very different: Düsseldorf Regional Court in Germany. The legal basis of the case was new, too. Rather than trademark infringement, Fender accused Yiwu of copyright infringement. Yiwu, which was accused of selling knockoff Fender Strats on the e-commerce site AliExpress, did not respond to the lawsuit. The Düsseldorf court thus entered a default judgment in Fender’s favor this past December. Relying on new German case law around the copyrightability of objects like guitars, that ruling held that the shape designed by Leo Fender is entitled to protection as an “outstanding intellectual creation that reflects his personality.” “The design as a body without edges gives the ‘Stratocaster’ soft curves that evoke associations with a female torso consisting of hips, waist and arms,” reads the December 2025 ruling. “Such a futuristic, elegant and timeless design of a guitar body, with a fretboard that further accentuates the asymmetrically curved shape, represented something fundamentally new at the time of the ‘Stratocaster’s’ conception and release.” Related Demands and Pushback Fender was quick to celebrate the Düsseldorf court’s ruling, and not just because it won an injunction against Yiwu. The company put out a press release in March announcing that beyond this one case, the decision had established “broad legal protection” for the Strat; Fender said it had acquired an enforceable copyright on the design that could be invoked to bar the manufacture of third-party Strat guitars within the European Union or the importation of such instruments into the continent, even if the sellers are based elsewhere. Fender followed up on this apparent threat with a series of cease-and-desist letters on May 11, targeting scores of instrument makers that sell their own versions of Strat-shaped electric guitars. Some companies that received the letter are based in Germany, like instrument retailer Thomann, while others are international, like U.S.-based PRS Guitars or the Japanese conglomerate Yamaha. These letters, an example of which was obtained by Billboard, cited the German default ruling and demanded that the targets “immediately stop manufacturing, selling, marketing or producing such infringing products.” “We appreciate that copies of our client’s famous ‘Stratocaster’ have been in the market before,” wrote German attorney Richard Dissmann of the international law firm Bird & Bird. “However, with the judgment of the Court of Düsseldorf, it is now clear that our client has a copyright to the shape of the ‘Stratocaster’ guitar body, and that copies of these guitar body constitute copyright infringement.” After receiving these cease-and-desist letters from Fender, many of the other musical instrument companies lawyered up. A number of them hired Ronald Bienstock, a New Jersey-based attorney with the firm Fox Rothschild. Bienstock specializes in music IP issues, and he previously represented Fender’s opponents in the seminal 2009 trademark case. Bienstock sent a series of response letters to Dissmann on May 21. These letters, one of which was obtained by Billboard, doubted that Fender has acquired such broad copyright protection. Bienstock argued that Fender cannot enforce this right on anyone other than Yiwu itself, since the Düsseldorf ruling was a default judgment based on an undeveloped record — that is, Yiwu did not respond, provide evidence or go to trial. Related Bienstock’s letters said that if Fender’s claims were fully litigated in Germany, the country’s courts would reject copyright protection for the Strat. He cited numerous reasons for this, including questions about the chain of title for Leo Fender’s original design, evidence that the Strat had multiple creators who were more interested in instrumental function than artistic design, and the conclusions about the shape’s “generic” nature that were reached by TTAB in 2009. “We are certain that any court would agree, if provided all relevant facts, that [Fender] cannot be granted a copyright in a guitar body design that your client can use to prevent the sale of competitor guitars with the same body shape, when that body shape has already been judged to be generic, and numerous other parties have made and sold guitars with that body shape throughout the world for several decades,” wrote Bienstock. One of the companies targeted by the cease-and-desist, Thomann, then escalated the fight in June by filing its own lawsuit against Fender in Germany. In this case, Thomann sought a declaration that its Strat-shaped guitar, the Harley Benton, does not infringe Fender’s copyrights. Thomann CEO Hans Thomann said in a statement, “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.” What Happens Next? Fender responded to Thomann’s lawsuit with a German countersuit doubling down on its copyright claims. Now that the two companies are actively fighting each other in court, a judge in the country will re-examine, with the benefit of more argument and evidence than in the Yiwu case, whether the Strat is indeed entitled to copyright protection under German law. This could be a lengthy process, as is often the case with litigation. In a statement to Billboard, Bienstock said, “The facts from 1954 on have not changed.” Not everybody is participating in the fight, though. In a follow-up correspondence sent by Fender at the end of May, Dissmann said many of the companies that received their initial cease-and-desist letter have since reached out and agreed to withdraw their Strat-shaped guitars from the market. “[These companies] have entered into reasonable settlement discussions on the premise that they will discontinue making and/or selling the ‘Stratocaster’ clones,” wrote Dissmann. “This proves that there is not a unanimous refusal from all third parties, but indeed also a great deal of understanding for our client.” Fender’s CEO, Edward “Bud” Cole, previously said in a statement that the company “has tremendous respect for the guitar community, independent builders, and the creativity that continues to shape this industry. At the same time, Fender has a responsibility to protect the iconic designs and brand identity associated with its instruments around the world.” “We believe competition and innovation are healthy for the industry, and we encourage the creation of new and original designs that push guitar innovation forward rather than relying on direct copies of Leo Fender’s pioneering work,” said Cole. “Protecting these iconic designs is part of Fender’s responsibility as a steward of the brand and its legacy — not just for Fender, but for the players and the broader music community who rely on the authenticity and integrity of these instruments. We remain open to engaging constructively with partners and companies across the industry as we navigate this process. Our goal is to protect that legacy while supporting a vibrant future for guitar making.”