In surfboards it is pretty simple right now. You can make anything you want. When it comes to fins to fit in others’ boxes—even the courts said that is legal. You just can’t counterfit or steal a knew invention. So, when you guys come up with a shape that has never been done, pattend it… RIGHT
The next thing you know, is that supermodels will start copyrighting their bodies, and you will need legal permission to clone them. How much for a shaping machine which can churn out supermodel shop dummies. I wouldn’t imagine riding them like surfboards though …
the only thing that you would have to check out in AUS is a little law called interlectual property. basicly coppyrite in aus is only broken if you have less than 25%change . so this meens that if you have a 10ft mal it is green. you want to coppy it . you coppy it but you want it red . that would be deemed 25% diff so no coppyrite is used . this is because there is no legaslation in the shaping game that says xyz is the master & no one can coppy him . basicily think of it like a carpenter i make a box that has dove joins you make a box that has dove joins we cant do anything about that now can we . the main thing is going to be personal ethics if ya rip off other disigns dont put ya name on them give credit to the orignal shaper . (never no some shapers just might approach ya to do some for them when they get bussy). koool all the best . dan
Funny thing happened the other day. My brother asked me to design him a 6’3 rounded pin. Once I had finished with the template he brought over a template he had copied from a website. I had never seen his template before nor the website. I was 1/8inch out in total to the board on the website. What now? Think of the chaos we would be creating if we copyrighted all our boards. Instead of feeding of each other intellectually we would be sewing each other.
The art of shaping is the shape. Imagine a world in which machines are common, and there are no copyrights on surfboards. He who has the cheapest production wins. I take a Bonzer, copy it, and make it for less. I grab a Merrick tri-plane, copy it, and make it for less. And so on. Copyright DOES protect surfboard shapes. Scanning a board and selling copies is illegal. But, think of it in, say, book terms. If you copy a book, it is no big deal. If you make it into a major production, and sell bound copies, you are in clear violation. you are 100% in the clear if you read the book, and try to incorporate its style into your own work. Machine shaping improves shaper consistency. They are becoming much more common. The shapes belong to their designers, in a copyright sense. It is flat out wrong illegal and immoral to mass-produce someone else’s boards by scanning, and machine-copying the shapes. Now, don’t get confused, if someone never looks at your shape and makes something VERY similar by their own independent creativity, there is no copyright violation. Copyright violations require DEMONSTRATING that the copier had access to the original, used this access, and made copies.