Peter asked: <snip> >>>>>How did you determine that the Nadgee is a copy of the Mariner Max hull?<<<<< I saw it in the distance at the 2002 West Coast Sea Kayak symposium. It was obvious at about 50 paces. The only question in my mind upon closer inspection and talking to the owner (who had liked on a vacation to Oz and had imported it to our area) was just how the copying had been done. I suspected that it could have been done from the "plans" (the cross sectional drawings) in Sea Kayaker, but there was one problem with that. Those drawings don't show the chines as hard as they actually are on the Max and the Nadgee had the Max's very hard chines in the stern as well. At that time there was no Max that I knew of in Australia or NZ. I made some inquiries and learned that I was right about the source and learned further that the chines had been later changed to be more like they really were on the Max. I was joking about collecting royalties. My understanding is that recently the law has been changed to allow "design patents" for boats but the law isn't retroactive to cover existing designs such as the Max. I contacted the builder and told him that if he planned to do any importing into the US that I wanted the first chance to be the distributor. He said he had more business than he could handle in Australia and had no such plans. Peter wrote: <Snip> >>>>>If the hull shape of your boat is copied, and the boat sold under some other banner, or not sold at all, just used privately, I question any infringement of rights. No issue of royalties arises. That is not a bad position, since it allows free development and improvement of designs. The Nadgee is being copied by a couple of amateurs at present.<<<<< Spoken like a lawyer. To use someone else's design (or a boat they designed--without mutually agreed compensation) as the basis for making modifications (whether improvements or not) is theft of the time and effort of the original designer. Maybe not by the letter of the law. While in the past there may have been little the designer can do legally, they have had their hard work converted to the enrichment of the person stealing their original design. It is dozens of times harder, physically, to start from scratch to design and build a boat than it is to take someone else's entire design and make a few modifications. The mental work hours that went into the ripped-off design may be far more than the physical hours. Since the copy-cat didn't do the mental work in the first place (and as a result is unlikely to have nearly the same understanding of the original) it is very unlikely that the result will be an improvement on the original. I'll bet the Nagdee builder doesn't appreciate the copies made by the "amateurs", but I guess as they say over here, "what goes around, comes around". He certainly has no grounds to complain. The next year at the West Coast Symposium I got a chance to paddle the (privately owned) Nadgee that I first saw the year before. I was surprised at how much difference there actually was in the handling (relative to what I had expected, because they look so similar). The Nadgee is much stiffer tracking than the Max when level (31 sec. 180 turn vs. 21 sec.) and somewhat slower turning when leaned up enough so water is not quite yet on the spraydeck (12 sec. 180 turn vs. 9 sec.). There just wasn't the same sportiness and this would likely also make the Nadgee harder to turn up into a high wind than the Max, especially for a less skilled paddler who is unwilling to lean it much while turning. Peter, look at the vertical hull picture of our 1985 design, the Mariner XL, in the "Kayaks--Mariner XL" pick-box on our website. The XL was the predecessor to the Max. Does that formerly unique hull bottom, rib keel, hard chine, and radical Swede-form shape look a little familiar to you? If so, then the Max hull should look even more familiar than that one. Matt Broze www.marinerkayaks.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:38 PDT