Quote:
When you buy a surfboard ,
do you own the board outright, in perpetuity and all that it contains ?
Maybe just the “surfboard” but not the shape ?
Or an exclusive, total, but non-commercial lease on the object ?
The question came around when I was talking with some guys from ( I dont want to even hint ) at a recent surf expo who were working out if you got a collection of famous 40’s/50’s/60’s/70’s/80’s shapes and machined copies, then they could make an income from surfings history by replicating historic originals with the latest techniques but without paying dues or commission to the shaper.
I told them that Bob McTavish had already done that with ‘pro-replicas’ in the 90’s.
But the question was…
Could an original and highly photographed Velzy,Jacobs, Edwards,Tom Blake, Duke , ‘Da Cat’ ,Thraillkill, Lopez or one of Slaters board be exactly replicated (minus logos, natch!), without infringing on the shapers ‘common law’ ownership, if there is any common law ownership?
There was never any discussion of how it could be done.
Its easy to know what is the right thing to do, but if exact copies are made, how is the original creator going to prove it and then get any benefit from being so inspirational so long ago ?
Does making a board mean that you own it forever or is it a Simon Anderson type of deal as in, – " No Patent-No Money".
If multi-finned epoxys appear in the marketplace as copies of “surfings perpetual icons” , but they dont mention precise names, you know whats going on…
SF.
I’ve been in meetings with our IP lawyers all week (a tier-1 firm), and in breaks, over lunches, etc, I asked them almost exactly this question, and several others regarding shaping/surfing/CAM machines/scanning, etc. Learned a lot this week about this subject, at least as it relates to patents and patent protection.
I might have misinterpreted everything I’ve been told, and I’m just an ignorant engineer, so be warned, but here’s what I got from all those hours speaking with some serious hot-shot IP lawyers.
Short answer is that copying in this case is probably safe (Safe means you can still be sued, but would likely not lose).
Why:
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A shape done 30 (?) years ago (like the Diff at SC), even if it had a patent (which of course it did not), the patent would have expired already, so it’s a free-for-all now.
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Patents exist to protect (for a limited period of time) inventions. The Diff at SC, for example, was nothing novel, and, in all likelihood, had nothing patentable about it whatsoever. If it was the first board to ever use, e.g., a fin, or a concave, or to be made of fiberglass, or something the patent officer could otherwise identify as novel, then fine, but in this case none of that applied (to my knowledge). Even if one or more of those things were true, it doesn’t mean a patent would automatically have been awarded (had one been asked for) – just that there might be grounds for a patent.
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All this crap about owning something but not really is recent bs promulgated by evil, greedy corporate scum, and it must be explicitly agreed to in order to be effective. You have to willingly give your soul to the devil for him to get it, right?
When you buy a board, IF at that time you sign an agreement that you are only buying the rights to surf that board and nothing else, then that’s one thing. You have signed no such agreement, so you are not bound in any way.
That nonsense is, to my knowledge, limited to the software world, and there is the concept of personal copies for backup purposes, so even there you’d have some security to legitimately copy.
- Even if your surfboard has something patentable about it, if you release that board to the public, and don’t apply for a patent within 1 year, then you have lost the right to ask for patent protection forever. This is in the USA. In Europe and Asia, you have no such 1-year grace period.
Therefore, any board that has been “highly photographed” and otherwise in the public domain, no matter how unique and novel, for more than 1 year, and has not been protected, can never be protected. Posting something on Sways is def. the public domain.
- In surfing, very little is truly new. There’s prior art for everything under the sun, crippling any patent attempt, and, even if process X is totally new to surfing, if it’s been used in another industry (like aviation, or the Space program, etc) then the chances of having something patentable go way, way down. There’s still a chance, but most of these types of transferences of technology fall under the “obvious” category, where a patent is not granted because it’s reasonable to assume that a competent practitioner of the art could eventually realize that using the other technology from the other industry would be a Good Idea in the surfing industry (or whatever industry) – even if it’s ten years ahead of the curve.
Unless you totally invent a new process, it can be very tough – mere refinements to an existing process are carefully scrutinized.
The ethical issues are very different, and very interesting, especially with the advent of the scanner…
While I think it’s great and logical that someone like Pavel gets to make money off his brilliant Speed Dialer design, to think that no human but him should ever, from now until the sun goes dark, be allowed to make a buck from the Speed Dialer design is silly. If you follow that logic, then all surfboard monies should go to the blood descendants of some ancient Hawaiian, since that guy invented the surfboard, and we’re all just stealing his intellectual property from his original (and highly patentable, at that time) idea – a platform to ride waves for recreation.
