This Fender drama is going worse every day... (and PRS is now involved?!)

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]If you've been following the Guitar World news recently, then you've probably already heard about the whole Fender Season and Desist situation. And I honestly kind of feel obliged to comment on this as a guitar content creator and as someone who really likes Fender guitars. Well, maybe not Strats.

[00:00:21]Let's not get carried away here, but Fender guitars in general because this whole situation is becoming something more than just another company protecting its designs. We're watching a giant company trying to reclaim a monopoly on a silhouette that has been a public domain for over half a century.

[00:00:43]And the way they're doing it is frankly a PR disaster. So back in 2009, Fender already tried to trademark the Strat, telly and Pbase body shapes and famously lost. The consensus back then was that the design became so iconic and so widely replicated that it basically became a public domain. But that whole reality just got flipped because of a court case in Germany. Fender sued a Chinese company that was selling direct strat copies on other express. The company didn't even show up in court to the defend themselves. So Fender won this case by default. The important part is that the regional court of Disseldorf ruled out that the stratcasta shape qualifies as the work of applied art under the European Union copyright law.

[00:01:40]By switching the argument from a trademark to copyright, Fender found some kind of a loophole because trademark expire if you don't defend them while you don't have to defend the copyright and it can last for years even after the creator's death. So after winning that case in Germany against a small Chinese company, Panda got bold.

[00:02:03]Suddenly, reports started surfacing about boutique builders getting the cease and desist letters. And these weren't just friendly, "Hey, stop doing that," emails. They're demanding that builders stop the production immediately, destroy the instruments they've made, hand out the sales data, and potentially also pay out legal fees.

[00:02:27]In the seas and disease letters, Fender reportedly claims that the stratcasta shape was a unique artistic achievement inspired by the lines of female body and by cars such as Ford Mustang. And there's just this small problem that the Stratacastaster was released in 1954 while the Ford Mustang didn't hit the streets until 1964.

[00:02:53]So they have mistakes in their own season desist letters. And to make matters even more surreal, Fender reportedly don't even use photos of the actual Fender Instruments. They use photos of a copy. And one of the first companies to publicly confirm getting one of these letters was LSL Instruments, a small familyrun builder in California. LSL actually started the GoFundMe to cover the fees to try to fight this and I'll put a link to that in the description so you can check it out. Now, let's talk about possible consequences of this. If this copyright interpretation sticks, the world of boutique guitars might change overnight.

[00:03:39]If they can copyright this strat, then what's coming next? The TVI, the Jazzm, the PBase, all these safe designs that builders have used for decades now suddenly become legal landmines. There's also a potential downstream on resale platforms. Surf Pacific Fund parent company owns a significant state at reverb.com. If offended decides that F-style guitars are illegal copies, they now have a direct line to the world's biggest resale platform for guitars. We could even see a future where you couldn't sell your boutique SS style guitar secondhand because it's flagged as an infringing product. Fender has spent years trying to be a cool artist friendly brand, leaning hard into influencer marketing and lifestyle branding. But you can't really be an artist friendly brand suing small familyrun shops out of existence for copying a guitar that Leander himself didn't even care to trademark. And that leaves me with a question. Why would anyone right now decide to buy a new Fender guitar while they're actively trying to kill the variety that makes the guitar community great? It's a bizarre feeling. Honestly, I've spent years playing Fanta guitars, commenting on them, showing them on my channel, but watching it all now, it feels like watching your favorite childhood hero turn into a corporate villain. Now that I'm editing this video that I've recorded a few days ago, I've learned a couple of new things to about this case.

[00:05:26]So, first is that Panda have finally decided to speak out and they said that only the guitars that directly copy the Stratacastaster shape are going to be affected and only the builders that directly copy the Stratacastaster shape.

[00:05:46]And the second thing is that they sent the season disaster letter to the PRS for the server sky model which I believe is not exactly the same as the stratcasta shape. So panda is kind of contradicting themselves right now. So that's all for this video. These are my thoughts on the panda situation. Let me know what are your thoughts in the comments. Hit the like button if you enjoyed this video. Subscribe for more guitar content and see you in the next video. Bye.