Class Politics Tight tolerances

Nobody, not event ILCA, can buy boats from one builder and bring them into the trademark territory of another builder without that builder's permission.

Of course you can buy boats and sell them elsewhere. I have bought several lasers and I do not remember signing anywhere that I was not allowed to bring this boat out of Europe and resell it there.

This is called parallell import and in fact manufacturers trying to prevent this could be in significant trouble with authorities due to anti-competitive behaviour.

There is nothing preventing a company from buying a load of lasers, Mercedes, Lacoste shirts, Redken Shampoos or whatever else where they want to buy and resell where they want. Normally prices will be too similar and this will not be profitable, but when the alternative is zero availability for championships...?

Hello McLaughlin time to put on your boots and buy some Australian Lasers...!
 
I wish LaserPerformance's sister company well in their sports marketing efforts. But they seem to have a rather unfortunate name in that there are several other companies in the field with very similar names...

First of all LP's sister company, I believe, is Maclaren (not McClaren or MacLaren or McLaren as they have been called earlier in this thread.) Maclaren is a company that makes baby strollers and the like, which uses that logo of 5 red diamonds that we saw on the sails at the Laser Slalom in SF last year.

Actually there really is a company in the sports world called McClaren. This is McClaren Sports who "work with athletes, coaches and sports business leaders to seize their greatest opportunities" whatever that means.

Neither of these should be confused with the even better know name, McLaren, a group of companies which grew out of the Formula One Racing Team of the same name.

You should also be careful not to confuse any of those companies with Maclaren Sports Marketing Inc. which, in spite of having the identical spelling of its name is not LP's sister company either, as far as I can tell, but a small family company based in Odessa, FL.

I wonder if Maclaren is getting into sponsorship of sailing just so we can all remember to spell their name properly? If so, their strategy doesn't seem to be working!
 
Of course you can buy boats and sell them elsewhere. I have bought several lasers and I do not remember signing anywhere that I was not allowed to bring this boat out of Europe and resell it there.

This is called parallell import and in fact manufacturers trying to prevent this could be in significant trouble with authorities due to anti-competitive behaviour.

There is nothing preventing a company from buying a load of lasers, Mercedes, Lacoste shirts, Redken Shampoos or whatever else where they want to buy and resell where they want. Normally prices will be too similar and this will not be profitable, but when the alternative is zero availability for championships...?

Hello McLaughlin time to put on your boots and buy some Australian Lasers...!

You are correct in that YOU, as an individual, can go to, say, Australia, buy a boat and import it back into your home country (which may be in, say, LP's trademark region) for you PERSONAL use. That is a clause in the Olympic contract signed by ISAF, the builders AND ILCA.

You cannot buy a boat, or boats, with the intent to resell it/them without running afoul of the trademark. In fact, I'm told that, technically, you aren't even allowed to resell a boat you import for personal use.

LP has been in the past quite aggressive in enforcing this and more than one container has been seized at the point of importation.

If this could be done then its such an obvious solution it would have been tried. And LP would not have been successful in seizing containers at the point of importation.

A big difference between the Laser Class and other classes is the trademark, specifically that its owned by the builders in the territories they control.
 
Siezed containers...

I have heard about this before...

Is this an urban legend or do we have the names of those who attempted to import and the numbers of boats and the dates these events happened?? What eventually happened to those boats??

It seems to me the only thing LP can do is sue somebody who attempts to sell a sailboat and call that sailboat a Laser.

I do not believe there is any law restricting anyone from building a fiberglass object that is exactly like the Laser sailboat and selling that object complete with rigging that makes it look and perform exactly like a laser sailboat.

In fact, I have a hunch a business could build and sell a line of FYLIBMO and FYSIBMO and the ONLY current problem would be the ILCA and Sunfish class refusal to allow look alike work alike boats to compete in their sanctioned events.

The only two reasons I have not built a few myself??:


no trusted lawyer who has said my beliefs are correct

lack of available capital to get started


( They are acronyms...ending in I Built My Own)
 
In one account, known as the Judgment of Solomon, two women came before Solomon to resolve a quarrel over which was the true mother of a baby. When Solomon suggests dividing the living child in two with a sword, the true mother is revealed to him as she is willing to give up her child rather than see the baby killed. Solomon then declares the woman who shows compassion to be the true mother, and gives the baby to her.

The baby is just about to be divided...
 
Siezed containers...

I have heard about this before...

Is this an urban legend or do we have the names of those who attempted to import and the numbers of boats and the dates these events happened?? What eventually happened to those boats??

It seems to me the only thing LP can do is sue somebody who attempts to sell a sailboat and call that sailboat a Laser.

They can sue whoever they want for whatever reason. Actually winning in court is a different story. Even if you are legally in the right, you may still have to hire a lawyer at great expense. Personally, I'm not wililng to take such a risk on a boat I sail for fun.
 
I hate to keep drawing conclusions, but given the deafening silence there is not much else we can do. To me it looks like LP is trying to put the squeeze on the ILCA by not providing boats, maybe clearing the way for them to create their own class association.

Squeeze ILCA for what?

In terms of the larger dispute, maybe I completely misunderstand this, but LP has a disagreement with Kirby, who took back rights from GS, and they maybe have a beef with the ISAF which has managed to stick its head in the sand and refuse to deal with the issue or let others deal with the issue, but I just don't see any disagreement between LP and ILCA.

In terms of charter boats, how is this not a supply and demand thing for either GS or LP? They are free to charge what the market will bear and if they can't make money out of it then they get out of the charter business, no?

The whole underlying problem is so hard to understand with so little information being public but it just seems like ISAF is holding everybody hostage through its inaction and as a result all parties are trying to find their own way out of the woods which sadly also seems to means the class itself suffers.
 
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I fail to see what this has to do with getting charter boats at events. Who is going to do the hauling and fixing? Will only sponsored sailors get charter boats?
 
"Official" announcement for sponsorship here.


Uh... somebody please tell me I am misreading this. It seems to me theese are maybe (???) the first baby steps to the splintering of the Laser class. I want to be the dumb American in this case but it looks like they are doing exactly what GS said they would do in (GS) setting up a Kirby dinghy class. Is LP setting up a Laserperformance class with this?

Somebody please tell me I am misunderstand and wrong...

I am afterall just an,

Old Dude
 
I'm no lawyer and I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn last night, but I'm not seeing the intent to splinter the class by what Maclaren/LP are doing. Not knowing how the previous arrangement worked for LP chartering/supplying boats to ILCA events, it's really tough to draw too many conclusions. We would have to hear from ILCA exec's to really tell us what the difference in the arrangements are.

If you look at the next to last page of http://laserperformance.com/dmdocuments/mac_orgapplication_021512f.pdf , it appears that Maclaren has "event packages" available that include delivering and picking up the boats.
 
Uh... somebody please tell me I am misreading this. It seems to me theese are maybe (???) the first baby steps to the splintering of the Laser class. I want to be the dumb American in this case but it looks like they are doing exactly what GS said they would do in (GS) setting up a Kirby dinghy class. Is LP setting up a Laserperformance class with this?
Old Dude

I don't know if this is a "splintering of the Laser class" but the individual sponsorship form from Maclaren does say..
All applicants who own a LaserPerformance dinghy must join the appropriate sub chapter of LaserPerformance United. On March 1, 2012, LaserPerformance United will create unions for 5 dinghies that will offer support, connections and promotions to dinghy owners. Visit www.laserperformance.com for more details and a list of all unions. If there is no chaper/union for your dinghy, you must join LaserPerformance United.


So if you, as an individual, apply for sponsorship you do have to join a "union" set up by LaserPerformance United. It's not clear to me what the purposes of this union will be. Will it be similar to a class association or something different?
 
First I have heard of "LaserPerformance United".

Well, one can't say that we don't live in interesting times!

For the record, LP is not handling the charter boats for the 4.7 and Standard Youth Worlds, ILCA will be.
 
For GER's m/fm's "2012 Seniors (<age 35) Worlds for the Laser"* at the s.c. "Boltenhagen" coast (@: s.c. "Baltic Sea"), our official LP(UK) - Laser store (@Hamburg) sure tries its very best, to offer enough s.c."OEM Laser's" as charter boats for ALL pro_Laserite-competitors that will come to us ( ... All I got as news from them, during my visit (in the end of January 2012) at their stand at GER's famous watersport exhibition "boot 2012").

-> "Pro's"! Come to us, your're all invited for a "final test" before you go to Wymouth/UK! It's lovely at Boltenhagen and sure a good place to meet friends tight, before you battle for the medals, in front of the complete s.c. "sailing globe"!

BTW:
My actually "measurement"-problem in the moment now is:
Is it DEFINITLELY/OFFICIALLY permitted, by our loved ILCA class rules, to use at the boom the "Racing"-Camcleat type " CL211 MK1", instead originally the "Camcleat 13 Racing Junior MK1"? I have reasons (that I explain later here, if the time comes for) to say:
It is NOT conform to the s.c. "ILCA class rules for the Laser", to replace the "Camcleat 13 Racing Junior MK1" by the follower: "CL211 Mk1" (view my picture here in attacment and compare to your own those 2 "different" types of Camcleats) at the boom of a "Laser 1"! Here, I remember to my former ask at TLF, about the correct fixing of the hikingstrap bungee at the traveller and the coorect type of Camcleat that there is permitted. (Only the "Camcleat 13 Racing Junior MK1" is permitted to use there, by the "ILCA class rules for the Laser"!!)

And YES, "AlanD," I could hear your laughing already yert, but I need a correct answer to my request!! May I've to ask the fom my side most unloved ILCA officer "Jean Luc M." (you know, for many reasons, I really hate to ask this "strange" guy directly via email ...)

Have all a nice Sunday!
LooserLu
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{*: -> http://www.laserklasse.de/pages/worlds-2012.php }
 

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