Guys,

Thanks for the input. The law is pretty clear in this country you register your design after showing it publicly and you get 10 years copyright protection. It’s cheap and fast. Unfortunately the damages max out at $50k but as you all said you really don’t want to take anyone to court you just want them to stop copying.

Outside the US we clearly don’t want to try and prosecute. What we want is to get a few reputable companies without design capabilities to license our design. The degree to which they believe they won’t get caught or we won’t prosecute lowers the amount we can charge for licensing. It seems to be a risk reward decision where the costs of splashing a boat are minimal and risk of actually getting taken to court are low. By licensing locally we have someone local who has an interest in keeping other copiers honest.

Regards,

Jack