Fender แพ้คดีลิขสิทธิ์ body ของ start , Tele, P bass และ J bass

[AVBestBuy.com]

มีเพิ่มเติมมาิิอีกครับ

You know, it really is a month-to-month struggle to survive in this market for small companies like us and Anderson. The guitar market, generally speaking, is totally saturated (way more supply than demand) and then we have to deal with big corporations like Fender that'll leverage their size and deep pockets to bleed us dry.

But, to be fair to Fender, I don't think they were at all targeting tiny US companies like us and Anderson. They were going after the cheap off-brand imported clones that are probably produced by the tens of thousands per month. I actually ran Fender's imported products operations when I was at Fender, so I know what that whole scene is like very well.

What companies like us and Anderson are doing is a drop in the bucket compared to what Fender does on a global scale (over $650 million in annual sales). Even with Gibson and Peavey involved in fighting this trademark application, Fender is probably bigger than all of the opposers combined.

Fender (i.e., the shareholders) wants to go public - pure and simple. They've been talking about that since I was there and that's why they got this venture capital company to take over - to take them public. But things haven't gone as they would have liked - growth stalled and that's why they're snatching up companies left and right (Guild, Gretsch, Jackson/Charvel, SWR, Tacoma, Kaman, Groove Tubes, etc.) for "growth" to show in their annual financials.

Getting the trademark on the body shapes would have been a huge coup for their grand plan of going public. They could charge small companies like us a hefty royalty fee and outright stomp out the offshore jobbers importing cheap knockoffs. I mean, I understand that that's probably the only thing they could pursue as greedy corporate businessmen. What else are they supposed to do? The whole idea is to make the company as attractive as possible for the IPO, cash out and then bail into the sunset. The only problem here is that they just don't understand the market and the customers anymore. I mean, how can you expect guys from mega financial institutions and execs who worked at WalMart, Home Depot, Best Buy and places like that to care about us measly guitar players?