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- Hacker News
- This makes me want to buy a new PRS. At Thomann.
- Recent and related:
Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48189539 - May 2026 (132 comments)
by dang - by altairprime
- Those who don’t know what this is about may appreciate Rick Beato’s (a guitar music vlogger) rant about itby jorisw
- This is a place where European copyright law is significantly different from US copyright law. In the US, copyright cannot cover a "functional part", which is why there is a third party auto parts industry. Improved functionality can be covered by a utility patent, but that lasts only 20 years. Designs can be protected by design patents, which last only 15 years. So in the US, any rights left in the form of the Stratocaster expired long ago.
US companies sometimes try to make "trade dress" or trademark claims, but that's much weaker than copyright.
by Animats - I used to work for a Thomann competitor "Musicstore" in ~2005.
The server was some tower server in a back office with a note reminding everyone not to turn it off.
With Thoman being hugged to death right now I would like to think of there being a similar situation (its probably fine, but it made me feel nostalgic).
by normaler - I still think this whole Fender-suing-everyone thing will end up with Thomann owning them either partially or completely.
But the weird German lawsuit was always about the fact that some private equity suits (or bad Hawaiian shirts, it seems) are upset that Thomann (and others) sell the PRS Silver Sky, which as they have probably deduced from the reverb.com data they now own, likely outsells equivalent Fender models by some margin.
So I think Thomann are just bringing it on.
And they aren't the only ones: LSL hired the lawyer who won the judgement that put the S-type body shape in the public domain in 2009.
by dofm - Apparently Fender got bought up by a private equity fund, Servco Pacific Capital. Who would have guessed.by vintermann