I was cleaning out some old files and found this hierarchy of characteristics that I once sent to my lawyer when I felt someone had copied a boat of mine. They never used it as a strongly worded letter caused the sleazebags to back off. In order of increasingly finer detail: 1. Does it look like a copy to the trained eye? 2. Does it look like a copy to the untrained eye? 3. Does it have the same primary dimensions at a specific displacement (LOA, LWL, Beam, Waterline Beam, draft +/- 2%)? 4. Does it have the same Prismatic coefficient +/- 1%? 5. Block coefficient +/- 1%? 6.Longitudinal center of buoyancy +/- 1%? 7. Longitudinal center of flotation +/- 1%? 8. Angles of entry and exit +/- 1%? 9. Are the sums of greatest positive and negative deviations at amidships and quarter sections less than 12.5mm. The tolerances cover building errors. No doubt some people will disagree but I think this would convince any judge that the builder copied the boat. Someone mentioned putting the suspect boat in the original boat's mold but this won't work well due to the accumulations of shrinkages and distortions from plug to boats. Cheers John Winters *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Aug 18 2004 - 05:18:13 PDT
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