Gibson 'style' shapes?

[Tadhg]

Since my earlier post, I saw a review of a Heritage Guitars LP ES style guitar. Even Heritage Guitars - built in Gibson's old factory, by former Gibson employees after Gibson moved to Nashville - changed their shape to avoid suit. Their lower bout is 1/2" larger in diameter.

[king casey]

Crazy. The Fender Stratocaster is far and away the most popular design to copy.
Yet Fender don't seem to be embroiled in legalese to anywhere near the same extent.
(and I'll say it again...it all seems to emanate from the 'Les Paul' department alone)

cheers, Mark.

[Fretworn]

Crazy. The Fender Stratocaster is far and away the most popular design to copy.
Yet Fender don't seem to be embroiled in legalese to anywhere near the same extent.
(and I'll say it again...it all seems to emanate from the 'Les Paul' department alone)

cheers, Mark.

That’s because Fender forgot to try and trademark the shape of the Tele and Strat until about 50 years after the they were released at which time the trademark was thrown out because there were too many copies on the market already. As long as the headstock is different and the logo is clearly different the body can be the same. I think they did trademark the offset bodies though, which is why you don’t find exact copies of those.

[Mr.Drifter]

Yeah, they trademarked the headstock for sure. Was a couple of prelawsuit jacksons with fender style headstocks. And yeah, the offset shape makes sense. Would explain why there's very few of them from others, and so many from fender