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I assume that Fender went after the name "Danocaster" because they were trying to protect the "XXXcaster" IP associated with a guitar. So that's back to trademark law - protecting Fender's rights to the name in the US, even if they can't protect the shape. As LucSulla pointed out, there are many ways to slice the IP pie, the main IP categories being copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. And then there is geographic scope, as the IP laws differ by country/region. Even if the laws themselves may be similar, the judicial precedents for interpreting and enforcing the laws may be considerably different in different regions. Patents expire after roughly 20 years, so any inventive aspect of the original Strat has been up for grabs since the 1970s. Patent laws were intended to give inventors a limited term monopoly over their inventions, which thereafter become public domain. This provides incentive to the inventors in the short term before the invention becomes part of society's technology base. Trademarks protect a business entity, not an invention. Trademarks enter the public domain if they become generic due to lack of enforcement by the trademark holder: names like escalator, aspirin, thermos, etc. Add the strat body shape to that list in the United States. But it seems Fender can still protect the name "Stratocaster" in the USA, as well as any variants that might reasonably create confusion in the marketplace. So in the USA, you can produce and sell a strat copy, but you can't call it a XXXcaster. Trade secrets can only be protected as long as they are kept secret. A guitar design is readily apparent, so it's never a candidate for being a trade secret, although a specific manufacturing technique might be. That leaves copyright. Different countries/regions have different time limits for copyrights. Fender seems to believe it has an angle on protecting the strat shape as a work of art in Europe, so they are going for it. So yeah, it's a small piece of the IP pie - but Fender has calculated that the European market for strats is big enough to go after. The present internet kerfuffle reflects the layman's general misunderstanding of both IP and the landscape of international law. Fender's European gambit is not a quest for WORLD DOMINATION OF ALL THINGS GUITAR. It is a corporation grasping at the final available IP straws protecting its cash cow.

A. Reach out to Jim, ask nicely for advice and or referral. B. Take it to your local amp tech with some rep that will do you right. No need to mingle in there when there's ppl out there trying to make an honest living doing what you need to accomplish. Shit breaks down. Get it fix and enjoy. Life's too short.

Well…either way….it’s going home with me…..

Strat copies didn't really become a thing until the Japanese started making a lot of them in the mid-late 70's. So the first 20 years of the Strat's life were relatively copy free. I think the CBS management at the time didn't see cheap Japanese copies as a big deal. Fast forward to the creation of the new FMIC when management bought the IP from CBS in the early 80's and nothing else. They are a separate company than the one that didn't police their trademarks. Moving through the 80's there were lots of Superstrats but they didn't use the exact Strat shape - Kramer, Ibanez, Jackson, etc. all used a modified shape. The 90's saw a resurgence of interest in traditional Strats and by the late 90's boutique builders were becoming a thing because of the internet. Now there are many builders making what are essentially copies at all price levels. From $200 import copies to $3K-4K high end Andersons and Suhrs. I really have no issue with Fender going after copies. It's pretty lame to just make a copy anyway. It is not difficult to change the shape a little so it's Stratty but not exactly. Don Grosh does a great job on his Retro Classics. So anyone who doesn't want to be affected by this simply needs to change the shape a bit. How hard is that?

Is the 90 body thicker than standard Newpport Like an Improv? Is the body carved out leaving the center block? For the record mine has the largest Hamer neck I have ever played Thanks Feynman!!

Looks shit.

1974-01-12 Van Morrison Austin, TX

That’ll show ‘em! Go GET ‘em, tiger! 🤣

Agreed... and I really like this version Well, I really like the original too~

Always a great time for a "Gilmour break." What are the odds that is "the" Les Paul? Really cool he and Romany are getting to do this together.

I'm not a lawyer, but I have written a bit about the history of copyright law in some of my published work, as it touches on some of my areas of scholarship. That's pretty much exactly what the German case was it seems. Copyright law is fairly similar among all the Berne Convention countries, of which the US and Germany are both signatories. That doesn't mean decisions one country is necessarily enforceable by all, but they are all working under similar rules. It's just as weird in Germany as it is in the US to pursue a copyright for design. I guess the argument goes something like thisL A. Fender lost a trademark case in 2009 due to the court ruling it never really policed the strat as trademark. B. Fender needed to try another area of intellectual property, and copyright was the only one left (the others being patents, trademarks, and trade secrets). C. Fender sued a AliExpress product in a German regional court with some history of ruling that later become precedent in the EU. D. Fender sued a product that was a clone. E. Fender thought that it would likely be a default judgement because the Chinese counterfeit company likely would not show up to defend itself. F. Fender has now backdoored its way into copyrighting the strat body in the EU without having to litigate if it was really something that could be copyrighted, which was the actual purpose from the start. The speculation is that they can now use this decision to begin building some kind of new case for owning the strat body style and that these threats may be as much about showing they are now working to protect their copyright, as to avoid same ruling as the 2009 case. What I don't know due to not being a lawyer is: To what end exactly? Do they want to establish the copyright here as well? Do they think they can revisit it as a trademark? Can you even do that again since there is a ruling? Would this stretch to use copyright for a guitar style by saying it's a "work of art" actually hold up if anyone showed up to defend themselves? And if any or all of these are true, can you effectively use an EU ruling as precedent here?

Dang, wish I was going with Jon for that one.

Congrats!!

WITH

They knocked off $500 and I traded a few things even up. That was a quick google search of the serial number….not accurate

Not sure where you’re seeing anything near 2014! That’s a 1986 serial. I’m 95+% convinced that’s a refin with a redone serial, but it’s damned cool.

The legal strategy would be for Fender to go after some of the small fish first and win some cases for relatively small money, which would establish a trail of precedent and make the bigger fish think twice about challenging them.

My understanding is that the dimensions are the same as the regular newport, but it does have the center block.

MuZanski Enterprises is bracing itself for the inevitable C&D letter...

Precisely. No vigorous defense until now? These "letters" are worth the paper they're written on. Fender won't spend the legal dough to go after a guy that makes sixty guitars a year. They just won't. I'm an accountant for 31 years. They would be throwing money away, unless they go after large companies making thousands of "Strats" and "Teles".

After tons of hours and thousands of co-pilot messages (amazing really) to figure out the new host created a broken VPS. The site should be back and better than ever. Beat it up and let me know what you find. That said. IPB message board we use has become bloated and is bugging me to constantly buy updates and move to their cloud services. It's to the point that I am ready to jump to another forum product. I am not planning on doing it this week. But likely in the future. If you are interested check out xenforo, its lighter weight, has a very similar feature set and much more appealing licensing. Thanks all for your patience. I appreciate every member of the first and best damn guitar forum on the internet for over 30 years your friend Ted Martin For those that have no clue what I am referring to see the back story here:

Hi Folks, Sorry about the delay in fixing attachment upload. I wasnt able to sort it immediately after go live on new server and work has had me away from home for last 3 weeks. I have some time off over weekend and going to dive deeper. That said I had mentioned that IPB has been turning the screws trying to get us to subscribe and so I am looking at moving to Xenforo which has a much more reasonable licensing model. I am also looking at that this weekend and moving to the new software might make more sense than fixing attachments in IPB. I'll keep you posted.

Miscellaneous other stuff:

The real early ones are behind me in this picture..... ...and on the far end in this one. I think they went back to 1950 (not '52 like I said earlier). There were a couple 'NoCasters' in there.

From my first trip: I got to fondle those two. They are both featherweights, have the necks you dream of, and are the same color. Yep. The left one is faded, the right one is not. The top row starts at '54 and goes to '60. The sunburst '58 was near-LP heavy, the rest (that I handled) were feathers. The white '58 had a neck shape that was very '50s LP-ish.

That would have been in 2007 (New Hartford), and I’m pretty sure we would have heard about that many Sustainblocks going out into the wild… 🤔

AUD? Done!

This is all I have for now. The guitar is in storage and I'm going to get it out about a day or two before the show. The back is mahogany (of course) and the sunburst on the back matches the front. Will Boggs GregWinds with taps. I don't have the original pickups.

Needs chainsawing. That and every one with HAMER USA labeling that didn't roll out of Northern Prairie Music, Palatine, Arlington Heights or New Hartford.