AI Summary
5 min readEverything is dupes
When you picture an electric guitar, you probably picture a Fender Stratocaster. The guitar emoji on your phone is a Stratocaster. Buddy Holly played one. So did Jimi Hendrix (upside down), David Gilmour, and Jerry Garcia. The shape is so iconic that it has become the default image of the electric guitar itself. And that is exactly the problem Fender now faces.
The company recently began issuing cease and desist letters to other guitar manufacturers, demanding they stop producing guitars that look like Stratocasters. One letter obtained by the podcast tells a US boutique builder to "cease and desist from further marketing such guitars," to recall and destroy existing models, and to send Fender money. The backlash has been fierce. Guitar YouTube, which "basically controls all of Guitar Culture," erupted. One commenter called Fender "fucking bullshit corporate ass fucks." Another said the company was acting like "the biggest bully in the world."
The legal battle over a silhouette
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Dupe Economy is Everywhere** - The episode opens by framing "dupes" as a cultural phenomenon that has moved from embarrassing fakes to a mainstream, accepted practice spanning guitars, Lululemon, lip gloss, Uggs, recipes, and even vacation destinations.
- 2 (02:32) **The Guitar Battle: Fender vs. the World** - Host introduces Charlie Harding, a guitar player, to explain Fender's aggressive legal campaign against guitar makers who copy the Stratocaster body shape.
- 3 (04:16) **Why the Stratocaster Shape is Sacred (and Generic)** - The Stratocaster's design is so iconic it is the default image of an electric guitar, even being the guitar emoji.
- 4 (06:31) **The $53 Dupe on Temu** - The host demonstrates the scale of the problem by finding a guitar on Temu that looks identical to a Fender Stratocaster for $53.49.
- 5 (07:05) **Fender's Long Legal Battle for the Shape** - Fender first tried to trademark the Stratocaster body shape in 2003, but was denied by the USPTO in 2009.
- 6 (08:10) **The German Court Victory That Changed Everything** - Fender won a default judgment in Düsseldorf, Germany, against a Chinese seller of cheap Strat copies.
- 7 (09:38) **Why Germany? The Legal Strategy** - Fender chose Germany because European intellectual property law is more favorable to product design claims than U.S. law.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Fender declared war on guitar makers. Lululemon declared war on Costco. Ugg declared war on Quince. Welcome to the era of the dupe product wars.
This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Jolie Myers and Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Photo by Francois LOCHON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.
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