Everything is dupes

Today, Explained

This episode explores the rise of 'dupe' culture across products from guitars to fashion, highlighting legal battles like Fender’s crackdown on Stratocaster imitations and broader societal debates about originality, affo

Key takeaways

• Fender's lawsuit against guitar dupes sparked global backlash

Transcript preview

On the show today we're going to talk about guitars. But don't worry if guitars aren't your thing because we're also going to talk about Lulu lemon and lip gloss and ugs and recipes and Doritos and Oreos and the island of Santarini. Do any of those speak to you? Have you figured out what the show's about yet? It's about dupes. It used to be kind of embarrassing to own a fake. Maybe you didn't want your friends to know that your parents bought you store-brand fruit loops, or fruit loops. didn't want their friends to know that that wasn't real Louis V. But not anymore. We don't even really use the word fake anymore. We use the word dupe and everyone's getting into the duplication game and some brands like Fender are fighting back. The impact of this could be nuclear. It could be absolutely catastrophic for the guitar industry as a whole. And we're going for them on today, explain from Vox. Megan Rapino here. This week on a touchmore, the beautiful game, I am sitting down with fashion designer, DJ, and the Washington Spirit's first ever creative director, Domo Wells, in her LA studio. We talk about Domo's unusual path towards sports fandom and how her work as a DJ makes her a better designer. And what designing for women's athletes and their fans should actually look like. Check out the latest episode of a touch more, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube. Support for today explained comes from fetch. Fetch is pet insurance if you hadn't figured it out. Do you have a pet? According to a study from A pet insurance company from a few years ago every six seconds a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill over a thousand dollars and it almost never comes at a convenient time. So check out fetch you get paid up to 90% of vet bills you can use fetch for any any vet in the US and Canada. Every vet is in network go to fetch pet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetch pet.com slash save. about guitars and it turns out you're surrounded by guitars. Is there a Fender Stratocaster back there? I feel like there is. Yeah, I got a Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster. You are clearly a guitar player. Yes. And there is a fight right now in guitar world. Tell us about the fight. It's a guitar battle. telling them you got to stop producing guitars that look like our stratocasters. If fender fired shots yesterday today they just launched a full scale invasion. I got a letter here a copy of a cease and desist letter that a US boutique guitar builder received three days ago. Basically it says dear sirs or madams we're riding to you in the name and on behalf of fender musical instruments corporation. Our clients has claims against you to cease and desist from further marketing such guitars, disclosure of information. guitar manufacturers to recall their models to destroy these instruments. Multiple boutique guitar builders here in the US receive virtually identical legal demands from Fender lawyers, stop making guitars, stop shipping guitars, destroy all your guitars, and send us a bunch of money. And this has blown up back in Fender's face as guitar YouTube, which basically controls all of guitar culture, has had a major backlash saying, Fender you have no right to claim this stratocaster guitar shape. This belongs to all of us. This is a PR disaster that will hurt you and haunt you, Fender, for years. There's so much musical DNA in that stratocaster shape that it almost stopped being a guitar design and became the default image of electric guitar itself. For people who don't know, I mean, the straticaster guitar. shape iconic. Literally the guitar emoji on your telephone is the Fender Stratocaster guitar. When you think electric guitar you probably picture a Stratocaster. The Fender Stratocaster with its two bullhorns and its shapely ergonomic body. That's what we think of when we think electric guitar. You probably first saw it in the hands of Buddy Holly. Her. Tomorello. Tomarello. Mark Knopfler. The edge. The edge. Steve Lacy. But he'll be you. But he'll be. Mark Knopler. The edge. Steve Lacy. But he guy. Please people. Jerry Garcia. really in many ways the Fender Stratocaster was made to be interpreted if you will. Uh, uh, Leo Fender who developed the Stratocaster was really inspired by Ford's manufacturing practices of modular easy to repair guitars. So rather than like gluing on the neck, which you can't take off easily, he decided why don't we bolt the neck on. And basically the entire Fender Stratocaster is built to be modified. So when you picture Jimmy Hendrix, he's playing an upside down straticaster. Eddie Van Halen. He's ripped out the pickups, put his own pickups in, he has painted the body, made it his own. People are constantly trying to make this guitar their own sound and so manufacturers, whether a boutique or other big guitar makers, have also tried to make S-style, stratocaster-style guitars because again it is the guitar that people think of when they think the electric and it's so modifiable. I went to Timu.com for the first time my life actually and they had me and they had me put a bunch of like deer in the right direction as like a human verification thing very cool website yeah and then I typed in guitar yeah and guess what came up a guitar that looks identical Charlie to a fender stratocaster and it's fifty three dollars and forty nine cents surely this is the thing that fender is worried about right because I'm guessing there is no fender stratocaster that costs fifty three dollars and forty nine cents Caster was first developed in 1954. Fender didn't start trying to claim its trademark over the body shape until 2003. They were denied the right to the ownership of that body shape in 2009. Applicant has failed to establish that configurations involved in the applications before us have acquired distinctiveness. The trademark trial and appeal board