Class Politics laser patent

You can't patent the Laser; there's not a sufficient inventive step (to use the UK/Aust term).
 
A patent has to be a new novel idea, a new technology that hasn't been done before. Bruce Kirby didn't invent the one-man fiberglass-hulled sailboat, he just created a new version of one.

What he does own is the design itself. If anything, he would hold a copyright to it. The exact design information is a carefully controlled information. The design belongs to Bruce Kirby and his licensees (i.e. Vanguard), not the Laser class.

If if there is no formal copyright or patent, I'm sure the Laser design would meet legal definitions of a proprietary trade secret. Anybody who tries to build a knock-off Laser would find their ass in court.
 
A little more. Say somebody invents a new injection molding technique for making fiberglass hulls that is less expensive. That is a patentable idea. Or say Harken comes up with a new low friction block (in fact it wouldn't suprise me if they held several patents). All of these would be new ideas.

A fiberglass sailboat with a dacron sail and aluminum spars was not a new concept in 1970. It was just a new intepretation.
 
If you go to the US Copyright Office - Records site at http://www.copyright.gov/records/ and search for copyrights held by Bruce Kirby you will see that copyright VA-298-296 was registered by Bruce in 1988 for the technical drawing of the Laser that appears on page 6 of The New Laser Sailing by Dick Tillman.
 

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