Registration of Vessel Hull Designs
The Vessel Hull Design Protection Act, Title 17, Chapter
13
of the United States Code, was signed into law on October 28, 1998,
providing for protection for original designs of vessel hulls. The law
grants an owner of an original vessel hull design certain exclusive rights
provided that application for registration of the design with the Copyright
Office is made within two years of the design being made public. Protection
is afforded only to vessel hull designs embodied in actual vessel hulls that
are publicly exhibited, publicly distributed, or offered for sale or sold
to the public on or after October 28, 1998. The Copyright Office has promulgated
interim regulations for registration
of vessel hull designs.
Please note that the fees* listed in the regulations are not current.
*NOTE: Copyright
Office fees are subject to change. For current fees, please check the
Copyright Office website at www.copyright.gov/docs/fees.html,
write the Copyright Office, or call (202) 707-3000. |
Registration of a vessel hull design must be made
on a Form
D-VH.
A continuation sheet, Form D-VH/CON,
may be used if additional space is required. To be considered for
registration, a submitted application must include the following elements:
- a completed
and signed Form D-VH;
- deposit material identifying the design
or designs for which registration is sought; and
- the appropriate
fee. The basic application fee for each design covers up to three
pages of deposit material.
For more than three pages of deposit material, there is an additional
charge.
The deposit material may consist of either drawings
or photographs of the design. Because the drawings or photographs constitute
the entire visual disclosure of the design, they should be clear and
complete, and include a sufficient number of views so that the
appearance of the design is adequately shown. Please consult
the “Basic
Information” section of Form D-VH for
the requirements for deposit material.
A single
application may be used for more than one design embodied in
the same vessel provided that the information contained in
all spaces of the application other than the information describing
the design is the same for each design. See the instructions for
Space 2 on Form D-VH and
use Form D-VH/CON.
The effective date
of a vessel hull design registration is the date on which
the Copyright Office publishes notice of the registration.
Notice of registration will be published on the Copyright
Office website, and registrations may be viewed, in reverse
chronological order, on our Vessel Hull Design
Registration page.
Although design protection and copyright protection
under title 17 of the United States Code are both administered
by the Register of Copyrights, they are not identical.
Design protection differs significantly in most respects,
including term of protection, ownership, eligibility,
scope of protection and registration procedures. While
some designs that are eligible for design protection may also be
eligible for copyright protection, design registration does not
include a copyright registration. Copyright registration must be
made separately.
Design protection under the Vessel Hull Design Protection
Act is not available, and registration may not be made, for designs that
have received patent protection under title 35 of the United
States Code.
When a design protected under the Vessel Hull Design
Protection Act is publicly exhibited, publicly distributed, or
offered for sale or sold to the public, a design notice should appear on
the vessel in the manner set forth in section 212.4 of the interim
regulations. The notice may contain, in
place of the name of the owner of the design, a distinctive identification
of the owner if the distinctive
identification has been recorded with the Copyright
Office.
The Copyright Office and the Patent and Trademark Office delivered
a report, “The Vessel Hull Design Protection Act: Overview and
Analysis,” to
Congress on November 3, 2003. Congress directed the Register
of Copyrights and the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual
Property/Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office
to conduct a study and report to Congress on the effectiveness
of the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act (VHDPA), enacted in 1998, which
created sui
generis protection
for original designs of water craft hulls and decks.
Vessel Hull Design Protection Act: Overview and Analysis
Appendices
|
|