This mold becomes the template for more boats. The competitor clearly does not have the costs that a manufacturer does in producing a new design and boat. This process can be accomplished in only a couple of days thus placing the imitator at a tremendous advantage, both in the time lag for introducing a new model and in the original cost. Clearly this a misappropriation of the work of another and clearly a practice which we seek to stop by means of some type of federal relief. Splashing is an inexpensive and easy way to build a fiberglass boat without hiring an architect or engineer to design it.
Splashers can reduce that investment to what they pay for the original boat, if that.
And, so the original boat manufacturer loses not only his design costs, but the profits from the sales of future boats as he is now in competition with a cheaper model of his own design. An inflatable boat is made from a flat piece of fabric. You make a pattern from an existing boat. The fabric is flattened out, cut and glued together. Anyone can trace and reproduce an inflatable boat.