As Ballistics in Scotland alluded to earlier, I am pretty sure the 1903 Springfield was an improved development of the 1893 & 1895 Spanish Mauser, captured in large quantity in Cuba, not the 1898 German Mauser. The Springfield Arsenal did not seem very worried about patent infringement at that time. Perhaps stingy Springfield engineers could salvage a little of the Krag tooling going with a modification of the older design.