Ironically, they are now sending cease-and-desist letters to guitar manufacturers that build guitars with the s-style that their stratocasters have, and they are public enemy number one in the guitar community right now.

https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/electric-guitars/fender-cease-and-desist-lsl-instruments

Sadly though with the recent cease and desist stuff they've been involved with it seems like they've turned scummy.

They then proceeded to not innovate at all for a couple decades and now they're serving cease and desists to any builders making guitars remotely similar to the Stratocaster with demands to recall and destroy sold guitars.

Fender is dogshit ass like Gibson. Both companies have behaved like entitled nepo-babies for decades. These companies deserve to die as punishment for their hubris.

Relevant link.

That was a nice read, thanks for sharing

Newman's own seemed on track to go through the same thing, but the original family bought it back before things got too far.

This is similar to how many of the big names in the video game industry were built. Disgruntled designers leaving companies like Atari to start their own company. It's how Blizzard got their start, and I believe Ubisoft, EA, and at least a couple of the other big names were founded the same way.

Then, of course, the bean counters started taking over and it all went downhill from there once they went from keeping the designers on task with realistic goals to maximizing profits.