My Riva Aquarama Plans

[classiclines]

I have been selling plans over the last few months for Chris Craft, Riva, Gar Wood etc.
I have been providing them on CD in a cad format with the viewer and printer that enables printing in any scale.

BUT... I'm not convinced it's that usefull anymore.
I was quoted between $200 and well over $300 for full scale plans from plan printing shops locally.
They were also hesitant to load the printing software which made me feel like
I was "polluting" their system somehow.

I have now turned to Adobe Acrobat in PDF format.
The accuracy is about 1.0 mm across 3.0 m.
The files are smaller, which alows me to email approx 40 full scale drawings in a zip file, about 1 M.

Am I on the right track?
I also supply images of each part and DXF files for laser and overhead routing.
I need advice on this format.

What do you want to see?

[B. Hamm]

I think what anyone would want to see is that you have the legal rights to sell the plans.

Bill H.

[helpful boater]

Are these from the boat building yards themselves or did you take the lines off a boat?

[classiclines]

Hi Helpful,
The plans are all from the original plans by the designers. Obviously not everyone knows that they are readily available for purchase.

[Tad]

Mr. Classic,

"readily available for purchase." does not include the right to duplicate and re-sell. Though I don't know about Gar Wood, I expect that Chris-Craft and Riva will take exception to your use of their company name to sell a product. Unless of course you have agreements with them and are paying them a royalty, which could well be the case for all I know.

You will find most on this forum are very particular about rights and ownership of designs, names, plans, and ideas. Personally, I find the idea of copying someone else's design work abhorrent. Perhaps you should consider a lower profile.

Tad Roberts
Yacht Designer

[SailDesign]

I'm with Tad. If you had bought some plans from me, and then decided to resell them, using my name or not, my small army of lawyers would be sitting on your doorstep as we type. If I was feeling nice.

Steve Baker
'Nuther yacht designer

[Puffin Marine]

I have read this thread with great interest, having recently bought a CD with plans for an Aquarama from a vendor in....Australia...

Clearly, the last thing any of us wants is to provoke legal disputes, and I am therefore eager to explore the arcane world of intellectual property rights as they pertain to boats.

Some questions, therefore, if you will humour me -

1. Does the original Riva yard still build boats, and do they own any especial patent or other rights (whether to the design or the Aquarama name?)

2. If there is a right, is this infringed by the seller of illicit plans, the builder of a copied boat, or both?

3. How heavily do owners of original boats frown on decent replicas? Clearly, in the world of automobiles, people who hack a bodykit onto a Pontiac or a Toyota and claim they have made a Ferrari 355 are ridiculed and rightly so; but what of a high-spec replica - such as the Kral 700 or the Xtravaganza (http://www.newclassicboats.com/Production.htm)

4. Overall, if we may assume for one moment that the build can be achieved to a good standard and that no attempt will be made to badge the replica under the original Aquarama name (much less under the Riva brand), what pitfalls can you foresee?

Many thanks for any help you can offer

Andrew
England

[Tad]

Hi Andrew,

All good questions, I'll give you my take on it.

1) The Riva yard is still very much in business http://www.riva-yacht.com. Whether they own particular patents, I have no idea, but they are sharp folks and I'm sure have taken whatever legal steps available to protect their work.

2) Can't speak on the legalities, not my field. As I stated above, morally the copying of plans for resale without some form of agreement with the creator is theft. Building from these plans is muddy, see below.

3) The owner's of original boats will view copies in all sorts of ways, but they will view them as copies. As you mention, by the purists copies will be ridiculed. By others they may be viewed as decent boats, but they will never be equal to the original, because they are copies. The Newclassic boats appear well made, but they will still always be just a copy, they are not the original item. As such, is the investment worth it? I don't know.

4) Personally I have no problem with you building something that looks like a Riva, as long as you aren't trying to pass it off as such. But building a boat using stolen plans is a sorry business. How do you know this design is worth the paper it's drawn on? What are the qualifications of the "Designer"? Will his business be there in future to support this design? Has a NA or yacht designer ever looked at these drawings? And you plan on investing thousands of hours and dollars in this project?

Of course bear in mind all these comments come from one engaged in selling designs for a living.

All the best, Tad

[gonzo]

classiclines:
Are or are you not authorized to sell these plans? You seem very quiet about the subject.

[Raggi_Thor]

eeevvvvvvvvvW4

[cyclops]

I think it is about 2 AM in his land.

[Raggi_Thor]

Originally Posted by Raggi_Thor

eeevvvvvvvvvW4

Eehhh, yeah, that was my son, 1 1/2 years old.
I am also wondering if this guy has the rights to sell plans.
Here in Norway you can buy plans for old classics like the Dragon, the Knarr, IOD and many Colin Archer designs from the museum, but of course you are not allowed to copy those plans and resell them.

[Puffin Marine]

Many thanks for your responses - the plans I have came from http://classicwoodenboatplans.com/ and are impressive - to a layman at least.

As you may perhaps already have suspected, I am neither a purist nor an antique collector - I just have an interest in boats, and as I currently own a 1951 mahogany launch manufactured by Pochin (yes, that's right, you've never heard of them, as mine is almost certainyl the only surviving exmple!) my interest started to wander after seeing a rather tasty Aquarama down in one of the boatyards on the River Thames.

A man can dream can't he? But dreaming is one thing, nicking other people's intellectual property quite another.

I have been trying to contact Riva enthusiasts' clubs and associations, though as you can imagine, they are just dismissive of replicas period, rather than having anything informed or useful to say about design rights.

In the UK we are experiencing the launches of a number of pseudo-classic designs including an aggressively priced 20ft runabout from Quicksilver, which is around half the price of a Kral 700, which si around a fifth of the price of a restored original Aquarama. As my interest is in boating, rather than Riva boats per se, this kind of price ladder is a significant consideration.

Anyhow, grateful for any further thoughts

Many Thanks

Andrew
England

[Puffin Marine]

I have now had an opportunity to speak with Riva Revival in the UK ( http://www.rivarevival.com/contact.htm ) who have been extremely helpful.

I interpret their comments and observations as follows -

1. Many people have planned and built Aquarama replicas, either using that name or another, and with or without modifications. The design is now considered to be effectively in the public domain, and this is entirely consistent with what Classic Wooden Boat Plans claim. As such, I can't see that either the seller of the plans or the builder of a boat using them would be violating design rights.

2. It is true, replicas are not the genuine article, and true afficionados will always treat them with contempt. However, that suggests that such a connoissuer (and there can't be more than 700 of them worldwide!) can spot the difference, and that such a person's oinion would matter in any case.

3. Problems could arise if an attempt were made to pass the boat off as an original, although this would in any case not succeed if the prospective purchaser knew anything about the genuine article. For safety, using either a slightly different shape or fitting-out, or a different model name ("Aquarada?") might be sufficient to avoid any confusion with the real deal, and in all cases the name "Riva" should be avoided, as the replica would not have been built by this firm.

4. The opinion seems to be that the value in an Aquarama is due primarily to it's style, performance, pedigree and finish, rather than the marque. As an example, the Aquarama's predecessor the Tritone is apparantly not worth half as much. Key determinants are the opulent quality of the finish and fittings, the use of two ridiculously over-powerful engines and the reliance on mahogany as the primary build material, rather than wood inserts into a fibreglass hull. Apparently the Kral 700 is an absolute no-no due to it's single engine, duoprop and 100% glass hull.

5. Ultimately, therefore, the question resolves into the issue of whether you wish to build an Aquarama-based boat for your own enjoyment, or for resale. All of the fun, status and prestige are there at a fraction of the price of an original, without any obvious legal impediment other than the need to get it CE-plated if you intend to use it in Europe. If you want to sell it, this is where difficulties might arise, as you can't positively prove your right to use the design, it is emphatically NOT what it suggests on the tin, and in the market for expensive secondhand runabouts you are going to have to compete head-on with both new and used Kral's etc as well as with lesser boats such as the Quicksilver Classic 20.

I am going to go ahead and build one.

[gonzo]

I didn't see any claim to the plans being authorized by the desingner or owner. Also, it says that to loft a boat and build it with errors would be a time consuming mistake. That is a big load of salesmanship BS. Lofting takes care of the errors in the offsets table.