ONBOARD Magazine summer 2019

COMMENT
The greatest form of flattery
It was the collector, Charles Caleb
Colton who is credited with first saying
“imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery.” The English cleric, well known for
his eccentricities was, like me, a writer
but he lived way back in the late 1780s
and died in 1832. Back then there were no
superyachts and I wonder what he might
have made of the way good ideas in our
industry are today being quickly mimicked
and put out to market.
I make the point because it is not so very long
ago that the New Zealand manufacturers
of clever clips and fastenings had to fight
an intellectual property dispute with a
British firm hell bent on copying what is
a brilliant idea. Fortunately for the Kiwi
firm, they had right and the protection of
very stringent patent law on their side and
the matter was settled, rather sensibly,
way before any case got further than in
house shouting.
But what of the floating platform idea
created by a former yacht crew husband
and wife team. How can they, or anyone
else come to that, protect what is nothing
more than a concept that utilises a floating
pontoon alongside another craft. The
basic idea is centuries old and has been
used to get people on and off ships from
the water’s edge to a higher deck. What
these guys have done is reinvent the idea
and apply it to superyachting. They have
invested hard graft and piles of cash to
get the idea to float (yes, I know there’s a
pun in there somewhere) and now others
are following suit. Captains seeking to
buy such a device are almost spoiled for
choice when it comes to buying this sort of
floating product and in one case the device
offered by the couple’s competitors, has
contracted the manufacturer with the very
same factory the couple themselves first
used to bring the idea to market.
The same can be said for companies
marketing inflatable slides that are fixed
to the side of a superyacht. Who came
first? Who copied who? Which is the
best? Which should a Captain buy? And is
there a moral dilemma here? If you know
Michael Howorth
looks into the moral
dilemma facing
Captains and Crew
when one firm offers
a certain service or
product, where the
ideas were initially
developed and brought
to market by others at
an earlier date
one company has sweated themselves to
death bringing a concept to market and
you know the other has done nothing more
than copy the idea who should you buy
from? I am not sure I know the answer
and through fear of getting letters from
lawyers acting on behalf of clients I am
studiously making sure I do not name
companies or take sides.
What I do know is, that if a company selling
tenders and toys suitable for use on board
my superyacht came along to me with
almost the very same name as a company
I had previously used as a supplier, I might
be, at best, confused. Reversing the order
of the nouns in a company name is surely
nothing if not deceitful?
Now when I worked for a marketing company,
eons ago, long before I gained four gold
bars on my epaulets, I do recall advising
clients that piggyback marketing was a
legitimate selling tool. But back then, my
client was manufacturing a mass market
product that was cheap to make and unit
sales were in the billions in countries all over
the world. Today, piggyback marketing has
a different connotation and is considered
good business. Back then it meant hitching
a ride on the coat tails of a company that
has done all the hard work of making a
product desirable.
And that is my point here. Is it right that
in a market place where there is at best
four or five thousand potential customers
one firm should capitalise on the hard work
of others and reap all the benefits? So I
can quite understand why others who
have invested sweat equity and cash into
an idea and then see it copied might be
a little miffed!
Can you imagine how, for example, the
publishers of a magazine might feel if
someone came along and started an online
site that employed some of the words
used in their own magazine’s title and
splashed it across the internet?
Maybe, and for all I know, someone already
has... surely not?
ONBOARD | SUMMER 2019 | 7