Plaques are issued by ISAF thru ILCA. They are of ISAF design, I suppose, and were not in the Construction Manual. Kirby complained about the use of his name on the plaque, and, as a result, ISAF removed the name. So what? ISAF can change the design of the plaque any time it wishes. It is the ISAF and ILCA that approve certain builder, not Kirby.
Lasers - Applying a Blow Torch
- Thread starter Otterbox
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Wildwavedesign
Member
ojfd :
Are you sure it is ISAF and ILCA that approve builders not Kirby ?
They may validate the build of the Laser for compliance, the licience arrangement to build pursuant to the Construction Manual is most certainly Kirby's domain ~ approval.
Are you sure it is ISAF and ILCA that approve builders not Kirby ?
They may validate the build of the Laser for compliance, the licience arrangement to build pursuant to the Construction Manual is most certainly Kirby's domain ~ approval.
Wildwavedesign
Member
Maybe I am incredibly dense : but
What is more than 20 years ?
And what is the logic behind the Laser is not a book ?
What is more than 20 years ?
And what is the logic behind the Laser is not a book ?
I'm deliberately putting up the old rule, so that even those who don't read official documents can see:
Here's the new rule, for comparision:
Construction Manual is new. Who has it? I think it must be ISAF, since Laser design is registered at ISAF (now, where did I read that?)
In simple terms: Want to become a Builder (in the context of Laser Class Rules)? Get the rights to use Laser trademark and come back. We (ISAF/ILCA) will consider it. How do you get the rights is not our business, we are sailor's association / federation, we do not interfer in commercial matters.
As anyone can see, the building agreement from Kirby is gone.
Construction Manual is new. Who has it? I think it must be ISAF, since Laser design is registered at ISAF (now, where did I read that?)
In simple terms: Want to become a Builder (in the context of Laser Class Rules)? Get the rights to use Laser trademark and come back. We (ISAF/ILCA) will consider it. How do you get the rights is not our business, we are sailor's association / federation, we do not interfer in commercial matters.
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LPE only own those rights in their region. The aussies have the rights to the Laser trademark etc in their regions.
This issue was only ever about LPE. It was business as usual in Australia. No supply issues and they paid all required fees.
That is correct. They only ever had the authority to validate the choice, not select a builder.
And that is exactly why Bruce Kirby has called them thieves. They have used a rule change to sidestep him and effectively steal his boat away and make it a generic class like Optimists or 420's as you mentioned earlier.
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dogwatch
Super Anarchist
I recommend a generic painkiller.
Yes everyone agrees that.
Which leaves the question of whether the contracts are enforceable when, if there's no IP, there's no consideration. Presumably LP, ISAF and ILCA have had advice that, for some reason, the contracts are not enforceable. Unless they believe that, their behaviour is inexplicable. Placing "IP" and "contract" in two different boxes might ease your headache but I'm not sure it's the correct analysis. If anyone else has a theory as to why BK's contracts may be unenforceable, I'd be interested to hear it.
Wildwavedesign
Member
ojfd : in any of the documents you have is there mention of who conducts / is responsible for compliance to Construction Manual ?
If you read the old rule carefully, you will see that manufacturer had to have a
building agreement from Bruce Kirby or Bruce Kirby Inc.
Kirby sold his rights to the third party. Third party does not equal "Bruce Kirby or Bruce Kirby Inc." We haven't seen those agreements yet, but some manufacturers considered their building agreements by this BK's move void.
"Generic classes", as you call them, are good for the sport of sailing, and, as history shows, are going strong. It's the BK's monopoly and his self-proclaimed "new world order" that might damage the Laser class. ;}
Wildwavedesign,
The documents that I have are the ones that are available on the web, namely:
1. ILCA By-Law 2012
2. Changes to ILCA By-Law 2013
3. 2013 ISAF Regulations
www.laserinternational.org
www.sailing.org
You just have to study them carefully.
To answer your question - I think it is a Builder (in the context of Laser Class Rules) that is responsible for compliance with the Construction Manual, but the control is taken by ILCA/ISAF.
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My understanding what that the "Bruce Kirby Inc" part of that was to deal with exactly this kind of situation. It gives a super-simple change if he had been hit by a truck or decides to attempt to retire (which it seems he was considering before this blew up). Basically "Bruce Kirby Inc" is a company on its own, if he sold it to another company (in this case, the Aussie builder, but any generic company would do for concept), they now own a business "Bruce Kirby Inc" just the same as our friends at LPE are owned by some company (which in turn is owned by another, and so on). This means that Bruce could sell the rights in the form of Bruce Kirby Inc and the acquiring company gains those rights similar to how they would any trademark or patent that the acquired company owned.
sprayblond
New member
- 47
- 2
Well, Clark Mills that designed the optimist donated the design.BK should do the same. To ILCA
dogwatch
Super Anarchist
Not entirely correct. Anybody can build an Optimist. Any builder licensed by ISAF can build a 420. Whereas under the proposed rule change, a builder "is a manufacturer that has the rights to use a Laser trademark" as well as having ISAF and ILCA approval. The proposed rule acknowledges the commercial ownership of the Laser brand, though obviously not in a way that favours BK.
BalticBandit
Super Anarchist
- 11,114
- 36
Robs example of Compaq and generic IBM PCs is instructive, particularly WRT "The Construction Manual". IBM's hardware was open for inspection and many MFGs made operational clones of it that did not use exactly the same architecture and hence the underlying "Basic Input Output System" (BIOS) was not quite the same Programs that used purely MS-DOS could run on an IBM PC and these other machines just fine, but programs like Flight Simulator, that relied on the BIOS or the hardware itself could not.
That's akin to the Russian knockoff of the Laser - the hullshape is basically the same, but the build details are not necessarily so. So iif you ran a "True Laser" against a Russian knockoff, the knockoff may or may not perform identically.
IBM had also essentially published UNDER COPYRIGHT the "Construction Manual" (the source code to the BIOS). and there were a couple of companies that tried knocking off the bios (Eagle Computer for one) with only minor changes - and got sued and went out of business.
What Compaq did was to reverse engineer the BioS to specific published interfaces. And they did this with a "Clean Room" approach the details are complex but the general gist is that they stuck a guy in a room and told him to write a BIOS. He would then hand off copies that they would test for compatibility against all the apps that were tied to the IBMBios and report back only that they faiiled and how they failed.
For ILCA to do that with a Construction Manual that is copyrighted to someone else, is that they would have to write a description of the Laser as a finished product, and hire someone who has no knowledge of how Lasers are constructed, have them write a new Construction Manual - test each iteration to see if it results in an essentially identical hull and repeat until they get an identical hull.S
Simply writing a new Construction Manual won't do it. Because changes in the Construction Method has the potential for instantly obsolescing all the existing hulls in the world. After all the New Manual would not be set up to build an inferior boat - that would kill the market. So the New Manual would likely result in a superior boat (more durable perhaps, perhaps quicker in the lumps ) and that would instantly obsolesce many of the older boats and kill their resale value.
That in turn would be catastrophic for the class. So re-engineering a copyrighted "Construction Manual" is not going to be trivial.
That's akin to the Russian knockoff of the Laser - the hullshape is basically the same, but the build details are not necessarily so. So iif you ran a "True Laser" against a Russian knockoff, the knockoff may or may not perform identically.
IBM had also essentially published UNDER COPYRIGHT the "Construction Manual" (the source code to the BIOS). and there were a couple of companies that tried knocking off the bios (Eagle Computer for one) with only minor changes - and got sued and went out of business.
What Compaq did was to reverse engineer the BioS to specific published interfaces. And they did this with a "Clean Room" approach the details are complex but the general gist is that they stuck a guy in a room and told him to write a BIOS. He would then hand off copies that they would test for compatibility against all the apps that were tied to the IBMBios and report back only that they faiiled and how they failed.
For ILCA to do that with a Construction Manual that is copyrighted to someone else, is that they would have to write a description of the Laser as a finished product, and hire someone who has no knowledge of how Lasers are constructed, have them write a new Construction Manual - test each iteration to see if it results in an essentially identical hull and repeat until they get an identical hull.S
Simply writing a new Construction Manual won't do it. Because changes in the Construction Method has the potential for instantly obsolescing all the existing hulls in the world. After all the New Manual would not be set up to build an inferior boat - that would kill the market. So the New Manual would likely result in a superior boat (more durable perhaps, perhaps quicker in the lumps ) and that would instantly obsolesce many of the older boats and kill their resale value.
That in turn would be catastrophic for the class. So re-engineering a copyrighted "Construction Manual" is not going to be trivial.
Wildwavedesign
Member
BB : near the mark mate, only how does one reverse engineer a "secret specification", in this case the Construction Manual ?
Perhaps there are ways to measure the unknown, ILCA seem to have the ability, simply put it to a vote.
Perhaps there are ways to measure the unknown, ILCA seem to have the ability, simply put it to a vote.
dogwatch
Super Anarchist
Not the same situation. The BIOS was part of the PC product. The construction manual is not part of the Laser product, it's a "cookbook".
Sailabout
Super Anarchist
so if the ILCA was replaced by a new organisation the problems would go away?
MR.CLEAN
Moderator
- Moderator
- #420
interestingly enough, the libel argument seems silly until you see that (a) the ILCA made at least one verifiable false statement of fact (when introducing the builder-change vote) and ( B) it straight-up damaged Kirby in quantifiable ways - that's pretty much the definition of libel, and is the first thing I'm seeing that really puts the ILCA in a bad legal spot.
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