and I get an add for this.......from a mimni simething surfboard.....
http://arablounge.com/?affiliateID=ADa_Al_en_gg_C-UK_Kuwaiti-OPT&gclid=CNj90pnR2KsCFSOAgwodLntmPQ
You haven’t figured that one out yet? It’s the, " it doesn’t matter what they are saying about you as long as they are saying something. " Like someone pointed out already, they can graspe something really tight and try and horde it all for yourself. They will get it anyway, a different way and you with your cool name will likely become obsolete or at the very least only win a victory in your own mind. Like the term Windsurfer already pointed out or " original thruster " Simon’s Nectar brand never ruled the sales of three fins even during the height of his fame.
As I said, I believer in trademarks. They are a vehicle to protect yourself from blatant rip offs marketing your slogan, mark or etc, you can trademark the name of any deceased person without anyone’s permission if it wasn’t already trademarked. If folks don’t want something of theirs trademarked. Trademark it yourself. It can be done on legal zoom for a couple of hundred dollars.
It just won’t mean much unless you are willing to pay a lawyer lot’s of money to enforce it. Internet tactics of talking about perpetrators behind their backs on blogs or ignoring them work best…or do they. Most folk have a hard time staying angry for someone else after the check is cashed, surfboad bro deal is ordered, or it simply grows old.
The term mini Simmons without an advertising campaign for T shirts won’t mean much. Everyone will still call them that and it’s not even illegal to call them that on your site as long as the trademarked name isn’t on the board itself. Think I’ll trademark the term Mini. 
And then whined like babies and throw temper tantrums when someone else does. There is a shop in the northeast that trademarked a few 70’s label and sells them as vintage. Do you think he gives two craps whether all the cool surfers like him or care about it. He did is due dilligence, created a product and put it on the market where folks can either buy it or not. I enjoy writing about the Asian manufacturing simply because I think of those who promote that stuff are typically surf industry style full of bologna…but…it’s legal…not all the stuff is bad and folks don’t need to ask any of the cool crowd’s opinion on how they spend their money. If something is important to you. Do your due diligence or close thy Pie Hole.
Joe is a very talented craftsman, I worked with him when we did a series of balsa Diffenderfer reproductions.
I see his full size and mini models come through the glass shop, by far one of the cleanest renditions, I’ve had my share of orders for Mini’s, but wanted a name for them for myself and started referring to the as Jr. Jimmon’s to my clients, I don’t like to step on others toes for no reason.
These are 3 I recently did for Yas Kojima at Kaion Shop in Waikiki
One of the best craftsmen here with one of the best outlooks. Beautiful boards Jim. What this site is all about.
Absolutely beautiful Jim…
Clean, polished elegance, with the added extra touch of fine stringer work…
Some of the nicest boards of this type I’ve seen on the net…
a bit more - this was just posted up on the surfermag forum, from the san diego reader:
www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/nov/30/citylights2-joe-bauguess/
In the 1940s and early 1950s, when other surfboard shapers worked intuitively, legendary surfer Bob Simmons was applying mathematics and boat-building and aircraft technology to board designs. In 1954, he died in a surfing accident off Windansea at the age of 35. Many in the local surfing community still revere Simmons but none more passionately than his younger contemporary John Elwell. Simmons and Elwell met at the Tijuana Sloughs in 1949, and the two became the best of surfing buddies.
Simmons had designed a nine-foot surfboard for Elwell to give to his girlfriend, who returned it years later. By email, Elwell tells me that he eventually commissioned Joe Bauguess, a respected shaper, to restore the board.
I am sitting in Joe Bauguess’s shop on Pacific Highway north of Old Town as he recalls the restoration job. “That was 2001,” says Bauguess, “and the Simmons board Elwell brought into a shop where I worked looked like a piece of driftwood somebody found on the beach. I got to work and was very hands-on with the thing for about a month. When I got finished, I marveled at what was in the board and what Simmons must have been thinking when he designed it.”
Afterward, Elwell commissioned Bauguess to shape a replica of the balsa wood board out of Styrofoam. Bauguess then shaped several more like it for other people. Eventually, he continues, “Along comes this guy Richard Kenvin, who had been riding the replica I did for Elwell. And he said, ‘I want to make a movie about Bob Simmons, and I want a balsa wood replica.’ Sometime later, Elwell, who loved to tell stories, mentioned that Simmons had made a six-foot board. Suddenly, Kenvin wanted me to design one of the six-foot boards for him.”
But nobody knew exactly what a Simmons six-foot board looked like, except that it was wider and shorter than most boards of its time. Bauguess says he guessed that “it was like the nine-foot board with three feet out of the center. And Elwell said, ‘I don’t know, you could try it.’”
In 2006, Bauguess shaped the six-foot board for Kenvin and gave it the name Mini-Simmons. On that board — and on all 200-plus editions of it he has subsequently shaped — Bauguess wrote near the tail, “Simmons-Bauguess Design.” Kenvin, who is known as an excellent surfer, tested the board repeatedly and reported back that it was extremely good, both fast and maneuverable. “Kenvin then said to me,” claims Bauguess, “ ‘Let’s keep this under wraps.’ I was very happy to hear him say that.” About that time, Bauguess had to go back to Costa Rica, where he now lives between trips to San Diego.
While away, Bauguess says he received an email from Kenvin reporting that he had asked another shaper to copy the Mini-Simmons so that a number of surfers could be filmed riding it. Bauguess was outraged, feeling Kenvin had broken a promise. Over the next months, according to Bauguess, Kenvin shared the board several more times. And he had the shapers paint the boards white and eliminate the words “Simmons-Bauguess Design.” Meanwhile, lots of surfboard shapers started selling the board as a Mini-Simmons, making no mention of Bauguess.
To get Kenvin’s side of the story, I interview him in the East Village loft where he lives and works. He asks that I not record the conversation.
Joe Bauguess’s belief that the Mini-Simmons would be kept “under wraps,” Kenvin tells me, concerned only its use for Hydrodynamica, the film that he is still putting together on Bob Simmons’s influence in the surfing world. Kenvin maintains that he never profited from what shapers other than Bauguess did with the Mini-Simmons. “That was their responsibility,” he tells me.
Despite their disagreements, Kenvin and Bauguess collaborated on marketing the Mini-Simmons for several years. For each board sold, Kenvin says he paid Bauguess $150 for shaping it. Over the course of the relationship, Kenvin claims he paid out $14,000. What is making the board successful, he continues, has been how the Mini-Simmons is being presented by the ongoing Hydrodynamica project and its website, especially a photo on its main page. The photo shows the board in a brilliant ethereal white. In 2008, Kenvin also wrote in the Surfer’s Journal an article called “Remember the Future,” which highlights Simmons’s influence on contemporary surfing.
An experienced surfer who saw the first Mini-Simmons tells me that Bauguess “modernized” what Simmons had done in an “innovative” way. But an email Kenvin sent me before we talked calls Bauguess’s contributions “minor refinements.” Farther on in the email, Kenvin argues that “without the surfing done on it and the pure white finish and the writing and photographs, and especially the acknowledgment of Simmons, it would have been just another funny looking board.”
In September 2009, Joe Bauguess stopped shaping Mini-Simmons boards for Kenvin, who tells me that the decision hit him hard. “I’d still be working for Joe today if he hadn’t done that. I was completely loyal. And he has never once thanked me.”
“I deserve some credit for creating the Mini-Simmons,” Bauguess says, citing a flatter bottom and sharper outside rail as only two of the features he added that could not have come from Simmons. Earlier this year, Bauguess finally obtained a trademark for the board. “It’s not an ego thing. This last year, while the Mini-Simmons board was being sold everywhere, using the name I gave it, I often had no orders to work on. I’m 67 years old and receive $370 from Social Security and no retirement. All I want from the board is to be able to continue making enough money to live on.”
Bit messy isn't it. Kind of sad really.
Fark how nice is jim's board? Brilliant!
Seems like a case of misguided expectations on both sides - shows the benefit of putting all expectations clearly in writing from the outset. As a contractor I know how those erroneous assumptions can come back and bite you in arse! Hope they can settle the matter amicably, before the lawyers get involved.
...and yes, Jim's boards are freakin beautiful!
I agree and got mine patent#616517
"only two f the added features he added that could not have from simmons" then why the frick ya calling it a simmons?
The concept of legal claim on a dead persons name is ridicules.
JOE should recognize that at the end of the day it dose the same thing as all surfboards, it is a wave riding device.
CAN a shaper lay property claim on a design started by someone that is dead?
SHOULD Joe be calming that he is the only one allowed to?
THE whole concept is morally screwed up and sickeningly disrespectful.
[quote="$1"]
"only two f the added features he added that could not have from simmons" then why the frick ya calling it a simmons?
[/quote]
Gee I hope Bill Thrailkill and a couple of the others here have got their names Trademarked...Im thinking of bringing out a shortened 70's design with 2 parrallel single fins, Im gonna call it the Mini-Thrailkill (TM) and make a million!
The problem is that the name Mini Simmons is being used as a classification for a type of surfboard. The inventor (or someone else) should just be creative enough to find a new name to classify this type of surfboard so that the name Mini Simmons can be know as simply the brand name for the “original” version.
apart from his work with the mini-simmons, Joe Bauguess does build some nice boards!
those are some nice hippy diffs.
I templated a green
kauai surfboards baugess
one time and changed
a few things in the rail and bottom.
I dint call it a morpho beaugesse.
…ambrose…
I dont think I called it anything
but a board for Glen Miyasato.
I had a 5’0 rounded square tail (that’s what we called em’) Kune back in the seventies. Man I loved that board. Because it was short it resisted spinning out in supisingly big waves. Only one fin though. Fins too far back seems kinda unresponsive to me. Love the Diffs too. I bought the patterns and made a few myself only I tweaked them just a twitch to get Shuan Tomson/Spider Murphey type single fin tube riders. I could tell you the formula but then I’d have to kill ya.
Yep, those are the Diff’s that Joe and I did for the Diffendefer Family Trust, just that an un-name person involved in the project spent all the money, I still haven’t been paid, the money man investor, got royally F’d
I really don't think people are getting rich off naming boards. It is a tribute and honor if done correctly. Some kooks will always try to put their spin on it whether for profit or recognition.
Both those Diff boards look beautiful. There was a real one hanging in fiberglass hawaii( honolulu) for years. Looked like it needed water.
Sometimes I wish I could pack it all up and just go surfing.
Aloha.
This guy Joe B didn’t invent this surfboard here is a link http://www2.swaylocks.com/forums/more-classic-nomad-surfboards
to 70’s twin
fins just like the one I had as a kid . Joe changed the numbers a bit
He made a surfboard model and called it mini Simmons. How many people call A wide shortboard with a bump tail a flyer tons.
He also thinks if you have a wood glass on twin or quad fin that is
close to his you ripped him off or maybe he invented these also.