Basses

Fender CEO Bud Cole admits “we could have done this better” over Strat legal threats, and claims they’re focused “solely on large manufacturers”

September 17, 2026

There can be little doubt that Fender issuing dozens of cease and desist letters to rival guitar builders big and small has sent shockwaves through the guitar industry and beyond.
It’s also clear that the the brand’s attempt to enforce the German court judgement over the Strat body shape has created a huge amount of negative publicity around the company, and new CEO Bud Cole.

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Now, for the first time since the story broke, Cole has given a public interview about the situation, in which he attempts to clarify the brand’s position, but also admits some mistakes were made in how the company went about its legal campaign.
Back in May, Fender issued a statement in which Cole claimed that “Our goal is to protect that legacy while supporting a vibrant future for guitar makers,” but in a new interview with Bloomberg Business, he admits that the brand may have got it wrong in how they went about pursuing that.
“There’s been a lot of introspection about this,” he says. “It’s clear to me that this got ahead of us – the legal process got ahead of us – and that we could have done this better.” Later on, he accepts that while the objective was to, “begin conversations with people” in order to discourage them making “copies” of the Strat, “In hindsight, there was probably a better way to do that.”
This isn’t the first time Cole has sought to calm the furore. Earlier this year he spoke at a dealer event insisting that the brand was “not suing anybody”.
In a leaked video of the address he stressed that, “What we’ve done is reach out thoughtfully and [respectfully] to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replicating the iconic Fender Stratocaster design.”
Nonetheless, the situation has escalated significantly in the months since. Boutique Californian builder LsL Instruments was the first brand to reveal they’d been targeted, but in the following weeks and months it became clear that major brands like Yamaha, PRS and even German retail giant Thomann had received cease and desist letters. Bloomberg claims that 60 companies were involved including Schecter Guitar Research and Ernie Ball Music Man.
Credit: Harley Benton
In response to the legal letter, Thomann – which claims it sells around 10,000 Fender Stratocasters every year – went so far as to launch its own legal action against Fender to “protect diversity and competition in the industry”.
Despite admitting that they could have handled the situation better, Cole is showing no signs that Fender has any plans to change course, however. In fact Cole claims that the strategy is working, with 32 builders currently working with Fender on drafting agreements that would see the legal threat resolved, 18 of whom have signed already.
What does seem to be changing however, is the focus of the campaign – while much of the negative publicity around the situation came from LsL revealing that they had been targeted, Cole insists that the focus of their attention is no longer on small, boutique builders.
Instead, Cole says the company is “very, very focused solely on large manufacturers now,” adding: “We are not focused at all now on boutique builders.”
Cole also insists that their priority is not to stifle competition, but to promote differentiation and innovation in the guitar industry. “They’re simply copying designs, and that does not help our industry,” he says of builders making S-types. “We all start out with the same piece of wood. There are unlimited ways to design a guitar with that piece of wood.”
Image: Adam Gasson
Where that leaves LsL Instruments – the boutique brand that made its presence as a recipient of a Fender cease and desist most known – is unclear. LsL confirmed in June that it had hired veteran guitar industry lawyer Ron Bienstock, who famously won a 2009 trademark case against Fender on behalf of a consortium of guitar brands. It saw Fender’s request to obtain trademarks for its Stratocaster, Telecaster and Precision Bass body shapes rejected.
In the article, LsL claims it has heard nothing from Fender that would indicate they are no longer being actively pursued, but the case has clearly been an expensive one. When the story broke, LsL raised over $50,000 in a GoFundMe to support their legal costs, but just this week announced a “fundraiser sale” of guitars aiming to “raise $75,000 in a very short amount of time”.
Regardless, Cole is adamant that despite the way the brand’s actions have been percieved, Fender’s goal was not legal aggression, but rather to “begin conversations with people” about how brands could “begin to design something that is not a direct copy”. “That has always been our objective,” he says.
Guitar.com has reached out to Fender for comment, you can read the full feature at Bloomberg Business.
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