Fender issues cease-and-desist to Australian vintage guitar shop

Fender has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Cool Old Guitars, the Australian vintage shop known for 1970s and 1980s lawsuit-era builds from Fernandes, Greco, ESP and Tokai. The store said on Instagram that it received the notice after using Fender terminology in product descriptions and on its website. It then changed its wording, including renaming some non-Fender instruments as "Twang-Style" guitars.

The letter, as quoted by the shop, says Fender believes Cool Old Guitars’ presentation of second-hand stock could "mislead, deceive, or confuse" Australian guitarists into thinking they are buying Fender instruments when they are not. It also objects to Fender guitars being shown alongside third-party instruments that mimic Fender body shapes, headstocks and other distinctive attributes. That lands in a sensitive corner of the vintage market, where words like Strat, Tele, Fender-style and Fender-compatible are used casually in listings but can carry legal weight when they suggest origin or endorsement.

For used-gear sellers, the practical risk is immediate. A shop that moves clone guitars, replacement parts or Fender-adjacent stock can become vulnerable not just for what it sells, but for how it tags and describes it for search, inventory and social media. Cool Old Guitars’ business sits right in that gray zone: the instruments it carries are prized precisely because they sit in the shadow of Fender and Gibson designs, and buyers in that market are trained to read the language closely.

The dispute also sits beside Fender’s wider 2026 push to police the Stratocaster outline itself. In March 2026, a Regional Court of Düsseldorf ruling found the Stratocaster body shape could be protected as a work of applied art under German and European Union law. Fender then sent cease-and-desist letters in May to several builders, including LsL Instruments and later PRS Guitars, with a 25 May deadline and instructions in some cases to halt production, recall product and destroy inventory. LsL launched a GoFundMe that reportedly raised more than $45,000 to help cover legal costs. Fender’s older attempt to trademark the Stratocaster, Telecaster and Precision Bass body outlines was rejected in 2009 by the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, even as the company still holds registered marks for STRATOCASTER and TELECASTER.

For Cool Old Guitars, the message is the same one Fender has been sending through the broader vintage market: the history of copying and borrowing may be baked into the gear, but the name on the listing is where the legal fight starts.