Alan Ratcliffe wrote
Fender is trying to copyright the "offset" body shape (Jags, Teles, Mustangs) - they shouldn't get it right because they have left it so long.
Also using an "offset" body does not make it a copy of anything.
See
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/gearandtunings.asp. Check out the green/blue guitar, the second one as you scroll down. Clearly it's inspired by a Fender, but so what? You couldn't pass it of as a Fender to anybody who even knows what a Strat or a Tele looks like (and it has the luthier's own logo on the headstock).
This was a custom build by Danny Ferrington for Thompson (who has long favoured guitars with single-coil pickups, and this is now his main stage axe - replacing his '59 Strat). But to me even if this were mass produced then it couldn't be construed as an attempt to infringe on a trademark or to pass an instrument off as a Fender. But it DOES have an offset body with the tummy tuck and the elbow cut.
There might be a case for copyrighting exact dimensions but then
a) You'd only have to modify your own design by enough to make a visible but slight difference
b) Fender probably have not stuck to consistent dimensions anyway.
On that same web page note the "Peerless" semi-acoustic.That's an interesting case. Looks quite a bit like other guitars you can think of, but not exactly. I remember when that guitar popped up in a promotional video a few years ago. The guitar nerds on the Richard Thompson mailing list drove themselves crazy trying to figure out what it was. It looked like a Switchmaster except for... then again it looked like such-and-such except for.... nobody thought "aha! A Korean guitar that is just sufficiently different from all the things you think it is to avoid correspondence with lawyers".
