I am liking a board I see on the web. The pics show plan view and rocker view. It is by a renowned shaper. I want to make templates off the pics. Would that be unethical? If I were going to try and mass produce it, I could see how it would be unethical, but It would just be two identical boards for my son and I. I won’t be selling the boards.
Well why really tell the whole world your going to scum someone’s shape?
If they were really really concerned about people stealing the shape i doubt they’d publish it…
I think it was in John Carper’s videos where he talks about people copying his boards, saying ‘imitation is a form of flattery’…?
~Lavz
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…” (C. C. Colton, 1820)
(or something like that; hope I copied that correctly).
Are you profitting from your board and your son’s? Are you copying from a photo? If you are, then
the chances are that you will not get an exact copy. Most basic portrait camera lenses will distort
especially at the outer edges of their field. If you take a direct tracing of the board, you might get closer
to a copy, but even then, experienced shapers will tell you, there will be error. If you digitize the board
will your plug be exact? depends upon who you ask.
So, are you really flattering this awesome shaper? Are you sincerely imitating? We all make singles,
fish, thrusters but these are the concepts of only 3 people and every one else if “flattering”.
IMHO, all your guilt will wash away once you and your son have a great surf session on your rendition
of another shaper’s rendition, of someone else’s idea…
Have fun.
It’s surprising to me how “ethical” most backyard shapers are…ok hear me out on this…
A friend of mine decided that I show him how I shaped my own boards and he thought that it was cool that I make and ride my own boards so about mid june he said he’ll be able to come over and we could shape some boards. He then asks me through email how hard would it be to counterfeit a board by al merrick because if he messed up the board he could just slap an al merrick sticker on it and sell it to some kook. Now this got me thinking…hmm…how hard would it be? then I thought…probably not that hard…copy the al merrick logo and create a laminate for it. (as well as moonlight glassing’s logo)…then just try and copy the way they label their boards…I said to him that some kook might fall for it…but any surfer worth his wax could easily identify it as a fake and probably get you in trouble…I told him that people would know just based on shape and the quality of glass job…specially for a first timer…then he said he was just curious about the idea…
So my point is that, chances are 80% of the people on swaylocks have the skill to shape and glass a good quality counterfeit of something that might make them some $$$ but they don’t…I think it’s trully a testament to how much we respect and honor each other as shapers regardless of backyarder or pro…
well…just my thoughts…
Anyways aqua…i think that you should go ahead and do it because I consider what you were thinking of doing as synonymous to using the lis fish template in the .pdf file that’s available here.
Rio
there’s a big difference between being so inspired by someone’s shape that you want to make one for yourself and ripping off someone’s logo in an effort to defraud anyone who can’t blatantly see how crappy your board is.
in the first instance…go for it. anyone who isn’t flattered by it is a prick. besides, a handmade board is always your own regardless of where the inspiration came from. is steve lis pissed that everyone and their brother is making retro fish? would rich harbour be offended that i fell in love with the Nineteen and hacked out something very similar for myself? would jon mar feel ripped off if he knew that i saw a sequence shot of joey valentin noseriding big sunset on one of his boards and am planning to make one just like it for the upcoming hurricane season? now if you were to scan someone else’s board into a shaping machine without their consent so that you can bang out an exact replica via CNC and call it your own, that wouldn’t be too cool…but i’m sure you already knew that. the line isn’t nearly as thin as you’re making it out to be, but i suppose it’s always best to air on the side of caution.
in the second instance…i don’t even know what to say. for those of you who have seen “Sprout”…people like that deserve a “micro-shaka” if any shaka at all. right along with the politicians and cops.
When a customer comes in and says I want one like this do we say no way man I’m not shaping that It’s a merrick or it’s a dahlberg. my oath you shape it (lovingly ) and charge them acordingly.
i recently made a bunch of templets for hot wire cutting… i used some old boards that i liked as a starting place… a few weeks back i had 4 6’4"s in my garage at the same time for i was doing some ding repair for some friends… one board was made by my friend Scott Miller who lives north of SF, one board was a TandC probably made on Oahu, one board was by the “Mighty” Merick so most likely from So Cal, and one was made by a small scale Oahu shaper named Howard… all the boards were squash tails all around 19" wide…
i took the rocker temp i made from the miller board and was absoulty shocked at how close the rockers were, i mean 1/16ths here and there…
pretty amazing when you consider all the boards were made in different places and probably out of different blanks… i know hidden rockers, concaves etc… but still i was shocked…
so my point, well i don’t exactly know but it seemed realvent when i started… go ahead and make the boards even try to find what blank they started with…
Some twenty years ago, a well-known french longboarder came back from a month or two in Hawaii with a 9’ 4" longboard made for him by Randy RARICK. One of my good friends asked me whether I could make a perfect copy of the board for him. I was reluctant since I like to shape my own designs, not others’… But he insisted and borrowed the board from said well-known french longboarder and brought it to my shop. He informed me I had to work fast since he was supposed to bring the board back to its owner the very next day.
So here I go, taking measures everywhere, almost every inch along the board. I spend a huge amount of time shaping that thing, since I was using australian BURFORD blanks at the time and the board had obviously been made out of a CLARK blank, so I had to make adjustments in the rocker and all that stuff. But I eventually come out with what seems like a good copy: standing side by side, both boards look pretty much alike.
My friend was a long-time acquaintance of Michel BARLAND (french surfboard building pioneer and shaping-machine inventor) and he took the blank to him to have it glassed. Now, Michel BARLAND had a habit of systematically checking and taking down the specs of any foreign surfboard that went through his shop. So he started out with all kinds of calipers and measure instruments, noting RARICK’s board specs, and while he was at it he also checked my “copy” in the same way.
And then he told my friend that the copy was “the best that could HUMANLY be done”. I was not there, but I have no reason to suspect that my friend would have invented the whole story. To this day, this is the best compliment I have ever had.
BUT my friend never rode that board as well as it was ridden originally, of course. And any shaping machine would have done the job faster and most probably better. So what’s the point?
Each time we shape a board, we copy someone, even if unconsciously. But it’s a different story to take exact specs and actually duplicate. And it’s much more fun trying something new.
I think if a shaper is known for a design, I can see how he would be upset to have someone else profit from it, but frankly, everyone copies someone else’s design to some degree.
As for copying logos, brands or marks: The way to protect your logo is to have it trademarked. If your not willing to take the legal steps required to protect you logo then you obviously don’t care enough about it to begin with.
If you have done that and somone copies your logo, keep in mind that you get just as much justice as you can afford and the public does not really care.
I hear this copy my design stuff alot and the fact is, thats simply a risk you take when you put something like a surfboard out to the public.
No shaper really ever owns a design 100%. I look at the nuggets and I see Velzy pigs in their past. I look at Steve Forstall Lazor Eggs and I see Skip Frye in their past. I look at Al Merricks and I see Mccoy lazor zaps in their past. I think most high performance longboards owe a debt to Stewart, Bahne, and Walden. It’s all linked pretty much.
Exactly - there are no completely original board designs out there.
And there’s a whole lot of difference between an intentional counterfeit, a ‘copy’ and ‘inspired by’. In the first case it’s legally actionable, the ‘copy’ won’t be a perfect copy because the technology just isn’t that good and 'inspired by ’ is what most can do anyhow…
Doc,
I know you know this, but it’s only legally actionable if they have protected their name. Otherwise, thats what happens and it’s really no one’s fault but the person who did not take the proper steps to protect themselves.
I just saw where some character put the dibs on Miky Dora’s name. He could be related, but it did not look like he was (being from San Diego.) I have always known of the law that you cannot legally trademark the name of a living person and to be honest I wondered who would jump on it first when Dora died. Parasitic? Yep. but perfectly legal and protected.
Would that be unethical?
Hell no!!
I go to this shop with a least 100 boards to look at…top brand name boards…i’ve got a very discerning eye for design…THEYRE ALL PRETTY MUCH THE SAME!!! The diffs are diminutive…mainstream board designs havent changed much in ten years…decades for longboards…
yeah go ahead and make that flyer…
ethics schmethics
Right, anyone that has tried to make two handmade boards the same knows that it’s virtually impossible, rocker, rail, glassing weight, fin angle etc, make every handmade board slightly unique. So go ahead and copy that shape, try to make it exactly like the original…especially from a picture.
-Jay
Everyone copies everyone else in their own way.
Your not trying to scrub out the name and put yours.
Your not signing his name.
Lots of cars have four wheels, lots of thrusters have three fins.
Don’t lose sleep over it, do what you like and have fun.
You’re right about Dora. Here’s your dibs…
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=ne0qun.3.4
Funny in an ironic sort of way, isn’t it.
Instead of breaking into cars all he really had to do was
license his name and run to the bank.
Is there such a thing as too easy? Perhaps. Or maybe he had some other insight.
Flip side is rule # one, never use your own name for your business. Look at Martha… so maybe Dora kept his freedom by doing things his way. One thing is for certain, the world needs characters, and Dora was one for sure.
I read this morning in Smithsonian(April 2005), Ernie Lapointe a great-grandson of Sitting Bull said, “that Sitting Bull had a vision the morning before the battle (of Little Bighorn) that ‘told him our warriors shouldn’t take the spoils of war, or injure the dead- but they did. That is why (Indians) are oppressed to this day - by the losers in the battle.’”
Now there is an ethics lesson for you. What you steal from the dead…
“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
– Pablo Picasso
“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
Albert Einstein
even if you do copy the outline, it wont turn out the same as the templated board anyway. look at shortboards these days they all have the same outline anyway.
Is every shaper unethical because they put fins on their boards? Are we ripping off Tom Blake (please feel free to correct me if my facts on Phil are incorrect)?
and the blind man reached out for a pencil to begin to copy the masterpiece
As he grasped the pencil turned out to be a garter snake
he dropped the snake to the ground.
the deaf man pressed the record button to copy the symphony
the amputee paid the clerk for the air jordans.
the satisfaction of making their own renditions
was totally eclipsed the day that the originals were encountered
by desperatly attempting a credible copy
they opened the door for the appreciation
of the short comings of the respective copys.
our spirits live inside these minds and bodies
simply because we are so entertaining,in our futility
…all the new Velzys will be copies
…ambrose… start yours today