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Boat plan rights
Contents
Protection of Plans
There are several ways a boat designer can attempt to protect their plans in the United States. As an advocate of free licensing, I do not support any of these.
Copyright
Boat plans may be protected under copyright law from duplication of the plans. The reason I emphasize "may" is that boats are "useful articles" and under the copyright act the design is only protected "if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article"[1][2] A minority argument is that the drawings are protected as distinct from the design manifest in a three dimensional work, similarly with technical drawings and architectural drawings (though for the latter there was a specific mention in the Act). The problem with this theory is that on building the boat, one could take down its lines precisely. As the manner of laying out boat plans and the manner for taking down the lines are highly standardized, these build-to plans would be nearly identical to the original plans yet would contain no creative content not in the boat. Therefore, there would be no creative content in the plans that could be distinguished from the functional aspects of the boat - unless the designer deviated from standards in which case the plans would likely be unbuildable. In other words, arguably only boat plans that are unbuildable have copyright protection.
To the extent boat plans are protected, they are subject to the normal rules (mainly that plans first published before 1923 are in the public domain, plans first published between 1923 and 1989 without notice or without registration or between 1923 and 1964 with notice and registration but without renewal are in the public domain). Works first published outside the United States after 1923 may be protected even if they did not have a notice or were not renewed. Very few boat plans will meet this standard unless they were first published in a book or a magazine and even in these cases satisfying the rules isn't guaranteed, especially for out of print materials and magazines that have closed their doors. After 1989, copyright would be automatic, if it is available at all.
Vessel Hull Design Protection Act
The Vessel Hull Design Protection Act (VHDPA) give certain specific protections to hull designs first made public on or after 28 October 1998 and registered within 2 years with the United States Copyright Office. To be eligible the design must be embodied in an actual vessel hull. The design, thus registered, is protected for ten years. A discussion of the act can be found here. Generally, the Act is intended to protect boat designers from having others copy the lines of their boats from photos and brochures or possibly from actually taking down the lines of an actual vessel, protection of the plans is not really the point and is secondary, as the types of designers who use the Act are not generally selling plans to clients but are making them as part of a boat building business. Registration would prevent a builder from building a copy of the boat either from plans obtained in violation of the copyright or from lines taken down from actual models and would add a claim for violation of the Act for cases of breach of contract where a designer licenses the plans for a specific number of vessels.
Contract
Vessel designers may make all sorts of restrictions on a vessel when they sell the plans to a builder or client. Frequently designers restrict the client to a single vessel or require royalties for additional vessels. Contractual restrictions, however, only bind the parties to the contract though the existence of such restrictions may form a basis for damages in a copyright action (i.e. if a non-party makes copyright infringing copies and then builds vessels - or a fourth party recipient of the copies does so, the designer may have a clearer claim for actual damages against the infringer); if' the design if protected by copyright at all.
Copyfraud
Copyfraud is the despicable process of claiming a right that one does not actually have, especially claiming that there is an enforceable copyright when there is not. This is a prophylactic device used to deter violators by threats of criminal or civil prosecution.
- ↑ 17 U.S.C. 101 (defining "Pictorial, graphic and sculptural works" as "Such works shall include works of artistic craftsmanship insofar as their form but not their mechanical or utilitarian aspects are concerned; the design of a useful article, as defined in this section, shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.")
- ↑ "Vessel Hull Design Protection Act of 1997 (H.R. 2696)", Statement of MaryBeth Peters, The Register of Copyrights, before the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, Oct. 23, 1997 ("It is a long-held view of the Office that a gap exists in legal protection for the designs of useful articles. Existing bodies of federal intellectual property law do not provide appropriate and practical coverage for such designs, while state law is largely preempted in this area. Consequently, while considerable investment and creativity may go into the creation of innovative designs, they often can be copied with impunity.").
