[...] Nash has its own licensing agreement with Fender. They're authorized to use Fender's headstock shape. [...] Why do you think Nash entered into license agreement with Fender? [...] The reason you don't hear about more lawsuits is that it rarely gets to the point of lawsuit. [...]
Dave,
You've made a couple of pretty inflammatory remarks, and I'm sure you are confident in your belief.
That said, I'm not an attorney, and I don't want to overstate what I know with certainty vs. what I believe based on the facts in the public domain.
In general, people imagine that the guitar business is somehow special and unique and has IP rights that are different than those that are applied to other industries.
In most of these discussions, people confuse Trademark, Copyright, and Patent and use the terms interchangeably.
Also, just because an attorney is paid $500 - $1000/hour doesn't mean he/she can automatically win a case that has no merit.
Is it possible to bully an uninformed defendant with a few letters from a high-powered attorney?
Absolutely.
On the specifics, I'm not of aware of whether Nash has entered into a licensing agreement with Fender or not.
However, if he has, I imagine that could undermine Fender's agreements with its current licensed vendors in that all are explicitly prohibited from building and selling new, branded instruments.
By the way, have you noticed that Warmoth no longer has their license agreement posted online?
Regardless, it's just the latest instance in the long history of authorized and unauthorized builders using these shapes on their instruments, resulting in the inevitability that the Trademarks are invalidated as generic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademarkAgain, with Trademarks, you can't have it both ways.
They either identify the brand, or they don't.
In general, IP lawsuits are litigated "behind the scenes", so what agreements are made tend to stay in the private domain.
As for the decisions other builders have made, with regards to whether or not to use/violate other builder's Trademarks in their builds, I'll leave it to them to tell their own story:
https://konschaklaw.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/fender-musical-instruments-accuses-luthier-of-counterfeiting-guitars-2/