Legal restrictions on selling canoes built from plans?

I way I feel about it when I'm building John Winters designs I like to pay for every extra canoe I build, in order to support John's work. It's got nothing to do with legality, but a sense of decency, recognizing his unique contributions. On the other hand, if I buy plans for a chestnut prospector from a generic contributor, I might feel different, as that person didn't develop that design.

I'm not questioning the propriety of paying a small royalty for the second, etc., boat from plans if that's what a legal contract says. I'm questioning whether there are such restrictive contracts. Redsalem reports that's what he was told on the phone and Gamma thinks he recalls a restriction, so maybe such restrictions are common. For myself if I were a builder from plans, and for now just out of professional legal curiosity, I would ask to see the exact language of the restriction and the document it's contained within.

As to who was the "original" designer of any canoe, I don't think any such thing exists. Every canoe that's on the market today has been taken in small or large part from previous designs, a historically long line of them—even by the same designer. I mean, you could line up 10 15' hulls from the same designer and not discern much difference among them.

"There's nothing new under the sun" is not only a Biblical saying, but one that is sometimes used in certain areas of the intellectual property field. The inability to discern what trivial changes constitute a "new" hull design is one of the reasons that American copyright and patent law gave up on trying to cover boat hulls. Did Plan Seller X really design Canoe Y that it's selling? I dunno, and neither does anyone else, really, as a matter of historical record. Say you buy plans for Canoe Y from Seller X, and for your second build you change a few dimensions. Have you made a "second Y" or made a "new design". I dunno, and neither does anyone else.

Not to muddy the waters, but what if you work off of published table of offset data, which is what I did. I didn't do it to save money, just wanted to do it that way. I have bought a few sets of plans, all of them said for one boat only, and couldn't be reproduced. The Kipawa plans I contacted them and asked about multiple copies, because I was thinking about doing one a year as a school club project, then selling/raffling them to cover costs. For the Kipawa there is a fee per boat built. I believe $45.00 They may have provided me a "deal" because it wasn't for profit.

I'm not an attorney, but I know with house designs, regulations vary by State in the U.S. In Wisconsin, as soon as you put your design "into action" it is copyrighted. Infringement is difficult to prove, but the costs are severe if caught. I was the benificiary of one such case. For a few canoes, I doubt many designers are going to pursue legal action. Start competing with Weenonah, with their designs, I'd think you are going to have issues.

I wonder if you built a couple for "personal use", paddled them a few times, then sold your "used" canoes if that would then be still be infringement? If not, can a canoe that you built from published plans ever legally be sold without paying royalties? Perhaps there is a fine line there.

Personally, I do believe in in paying royalties when using designs that someone worked on for many long hours. Doing design work for the Furniture Industry in my past, I understand the time and effort that is put into the original design and subsequent refinement of designs prior to production. This effort should be rewarded when used, and in our system the the reward is in the form of royalties.

I'll muddy the waters a bit more. Back in the 1994 I bought a book on building strip canoes. It came with a paper pattern for forms for a particular model. I had in mind to move the forms around and create a 15' solo from a 16' tandem. I also planned on changing the dimensions of the beam. I never did build a boat, but if I had would it now have been "my design" since I planed on modifying it to my own preferences and dimensions? Knowing me, I probably would have given it a name. So now we have a new boat with a new name. Who's intellectual property is it now?

As an aside, I have no problem with giving a royalty to a designer as a courtesy for reusing his plans.

I was told by a cedar strip canoe designer and builder, that if you altered a design, it no longer required a royalty to be paid .
After all, we would all be paying the estate of Henry Rushton for the canoes we build today.

My Pearl, is a combination of two canoe designs. Bruce Kunz's Merlin, and Bob Brown's Pirate. By the way, both of these builders are deceased.
After combining these two designs, the top of the Merlin, and the bottom of the Pirate, I altered the stems, for more rocker.

Is this now my design ? I think so.
If I was to sell you a copy of my design, and you altered it ? I would not expect a Royalty.
If you copied my plan, and sold copies ? I would.

My feelings !

PS. I have rarely built a canoe in it's original design.

Jim Dodd

I thought I'd poke around on this and first I found was https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap13.html which immediatly stated:

(2) Vessel features.—The design of a vessel hull, deck, or combination of a hull and deck, including a plug or mold, is subject to protection under this chapter, notwithstanding section 1302(4).
I didn't know marine vessels figured so prominently in copyrighted design law.

And this to no surprise has been debated here before.


I think it's illegal to copy the design if it's copyrighted. How much you have to change is not clear. If making a one of for your use, I doubt you get sued. To costly for too little. Reproduce a 100 of them, hard to know.

billconner said:

I thought I'd poke around on this and first I found was https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap13.html

Click to expand...

Bill, the law you have linked—chapter 13 of the Copyright Act—is called the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act (VHDPA). While the VHDPA was placed into the Copyright Act for administrative convenience, it does NOT give copyright protection to vessel designs. It gives a sui generis (unique) form of protection that is not copyright, patent or trademark.

I have explained the provisions of the VHDPA in detail, and why no canoes are currently protected by it, in the thread you linked at this post (and others that follow):


I further explained in that thread that canoe design PLANS (on paper or digital) can be copyrighted. That just means if you legally acquire such plans, you can't make a copy of those plans. But you can copy any canoe hull by plug molding ("splashing") unless that hull is currently registered and protected by the VHDPA, which, as I have explained, no canoe currently is.

Everything I just said applies to U.S. law only. I have no idea whether or how Canada or any other country gives intellectual property protection to canoe hull designs. For an in depth description of the VHDPA from the U.S. Copyright Office, see here:


To circle back to the various scenarios being discussed in this thread, I'll summarize U.S. legal concepts.

- Any canoe can be copied by plug molding the hull because none has a current registration under the VHDPA.

- A person like Blue Valley can get a copyright in canoe design plans that it originates. If those plans are sold to you by Blue Valley, you cannot make a copy of the plans. But you can make as many boats as you want from the plans, except:

- You can be limited in how many boats you can make from the plans if the Blue Valley contract under which you bought the plans has a contractual restriction. This is a matter of contract law not copyright law. Blue Valley can contractually stipulate that you have to pay $X for each canoe you make from the plans after the first one.

- If you make some sort of "significant change" to the second boat boat you make, then the contractual obligation to pay $X to Blue Valley probably would not apply. Blue Valley would have to take you to court and prove your changes were not "significant", an inherently ambiguous word.

- A final situation can arise if you give or sell the original set of plans, without making any copies, to a third party such as me. Under contract law, I arguably am not bound by the $X per extra boat restriction because I was never a party to a the contract between you and Blue Valley. In fact, I may not even have knowledge of that contract. I do know I can't make a copy of the plans because of the required copyright notice on them.