LucSulla

I've gotten upgraded to comfort+ a couple of times on international flights. I could give a rip domestically, but that 4 inches or whatever really adds up over eight hours of throbbing, hot international travel. But I just can't sleep on a plane. Even if I take meds, I end up too tired to read and too awake to sleep beyond sometimes entering this very disconcerting liminal space where I keep thinking about falling through the sky. And Geoff Tate is there smiling next to me. Also disconcerting. No bueno. I'm hoping that if I can lay down I can actually knock out for a few hours. Plus, I'm flying with a partscaster, so having the guaranteed closet access is worth at least a couple of Benjamins to me. The flight over, one of the attendants had just bought his son a guitar and made a point to put it in the Delta One cabin even though I was in economy (actually the first time in years flying felt like how it was pre-9/11). I wasn't sure if I'd get that lucky again, but at least I don't have to worry about it now.

I went for it. I do have enough guitars, and I still have to drive from Atlanta to Oxford, MS, after landing. Getting some sleep on the way back means making that trip day of rather than spending a couple hundred bucks on getting a room in Atlanta due to be too exhausted to drive another five hours.

Talking to the GF about getting back to the States after this study abroad trip I lead ends. Me - "The plane ride from Naples to Atlanta is 11.5 hours, and an upgrade to Delta One is $1400. That's something like $120 an hour, but maybe I could actually sleep for once." Her - "Or you could look at it as the price of one guitar, and you certainly buy enough of those every year." Me - "You know far too much these days about how expensive my hobbies are."

RIP, Johnny.

Apparently, never, nor was he the sole designer of the strat. Nor was there ever a transfer of copyright between him and CBS when CBS bought the company, more than likely because one was never assumed to exist. I'm not sure when circumstantial evidence becomes material, but it sure is weird that with all of those sales of Fender of the years that no contracts around the ownership of the Stratocaster copyright ever took place. Seems like a pretty valuable piece of intellectual property to happen to forget about when selling a company to new owners. The fact that FEIC DID trademark and copyright this and that, thus indicating that were aware that intellectual property was a thing and that it needed to be officially documented and/or enforced, depending on what type it was, can't help. Fender even trademarked the P Bass then never enforced it. There is a pretty extensive papertrail of FEIC (OG Fender Company Pre-CBS) having never designed around aesthetics per se but from a solely utilitarian approach and that they had little interest in policing their designs, which should be just poison for arguing there is anything here deserving of copyright protection, should doing a lot of work there. There's actually more evidence that Leo thought it was awesome if other people thought his designs were so good that they imitated them. It's always seemed to me that date of creation, chain of ownership, and some clear intent to protect something are of paramount importance in intellectual property disputes. Fender did none of this for nearly half a century with the stratocaster, even marketing themselves as an original in a see of clones quite often in the 80s and 90s. They were openly acknowledging the ubiquity of the strat design for two decades and not lifting a finger about it legally, according to that attorney's response to Fender's initial notice. I would think that would all be far too much to overcome, but I am just a pastiche of a copyright attorney. I'd be curious what actual IP lawyers think.

^Man, that attorney really bodied Fender in my amateur opinion.

I would have preferred to just read this, but I can't find it and am left to a "reaction" video Nonetheless, the response by the lawyer representing a group of builders makes it seem like Fender's case in Germany was really, really slapdash. A lot of the basic facts claimed by Fender in the case are just objectively inaccurate and rather embarrassing to hear listed out now that there is an attorney presenting an actual defense.

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?

I chipped in to help fund LSL's lawsuit against Fender. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-defend-s-style-guitars Seriously, fuck Fender for this. I know there are some great guitar builders who work there, but this is just everything I hate about business today.

The did it in Germany by going after copyright infringement vs. trademark infringement. They claimed the stratocaster body is a "work of art" based on the body of a woman. Annnnd they also brought it against a Chinese counterfeit product where the defendant didn't even present a defense, so they won basically by default.

I bought a "Bikini Sunset" Jackson Fusion from that guy back before the pandemic. Actually put a bid in that got accepted while playing a gig. I kept thinking about it while I was playing, and after a couple of drinks to make what was probably a bad decision seem like a good one, I started haggling between songs.

My favorite DAC story is actually Waylon's story about threatening to kick his ass back in the 70s.

I never hated on Gibson nearly as much as some. I thought they made some goofy shit, but being 100% honest, I've owned quite a few Henry-era Gibsons with 0 issues. I think I'm on my third SG, and I've owned six LPs from that era, two Explorers, one Flying V Pro, one 335 Studio, and one Firebird. One of the LPs kinda sucked, but all the rest were good guitars aside from the occasional garbage nut. A lot of them, I wish I still had (well, I do have four of them still), and those that I don't have anymore are really more a question of taste than there being a problem with them. And as cringe as the Firebird X was and similar guitars, I can't say that's really any worse than the "Play Authentic" crap and hammering smaller builders like Dean.

I didn't need to know that Gibson was capable of making a neck like this. It's definitely very non-traditional of them, but damn, does it work for metal.

This is such a slick cover.