Advising a Maritime or Shipbuilding Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Vessel Designs, Classification Records, Shipyard Contracts, and Voyage Data
By Casey Scott McKay ·
A working guide to advising owners, yards, designers, equipment suppliers, and charterers on the intellectual property that attaches to vessels. It covers design and hull form protection, the shipbuilding contract terms that decide reuse and improvement ownership, classification society records and who may see them, equipment supply and software licensing on hulls that outlive their vendors, and rights in the data a moving vessel generates. It sets out the jurisdictional analysis that flag, registry, and the high seas force on a territorial body of law. It closes with sale and purchase practice, autonomy, and a short engagement protocol.
IP and Technology > Patent Counseling Transactions | Guide | Published 16 January 2025 - Updated 6 March 2025 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Who this guide is for and how to use it
You have been asked to act for someone in the maritime sector. Which someone matters enormously, because this is an industry where the parties' intellectual property interests are not merely different but directly opposed, and the standard contract forms do not resolve the conflict — they postpone it.
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