Intellectual Property & the Handmade Business

Intellectual Property & the Handmade Business
You can trademark a product name, company name, or logo design. Once your name/design is a registered trademark, you can take legal action against others that use that name/design. You cannot trademark an invention or a product design; think of trademarking more as protecting one clever word or group of words that you’ve come up with. For example, if your business name was “SillyBums” you could apply to have that trademarked. If you manufactured diaper covers and called them “RuffleyPants”, you could apply to have that name trademarked. In Canada, you can search for current trademarks in their online database. If yours is not taken, it’s easy to apply online. The cost is a couple of hundred dollars to start. After several months, you will be notified as to whether or not your trademark is “registered”, and then you will pay another fee (if there is opposition to your trademark, you’ll need to pay more money and go through further steps). Commonly, people that have submitted a name/design for trademarking use the symbol (TM) near their design and once the trademark is registered, they use the symbol (R).
A patent can be used to protect an invention or a unique product design. It is more expensive than a trademark (though initially, in Canada, the fees to apply are similar) and take a long time to process. After you apply for a patent, your product is labelled as “Patent Pending”. While you cannot take legal action against people that copy your invention while your patent is pending, you can take action after you receive your patent against these people. The reverse is true: if you copy a “patent pending” design, the original designer cannot sue you. Once they get their patent, they can take action against you for losses. (The lesson here: It’s best NOT to copy any patented OR patent pending designs!) It’s always a good idea to search for patents on any particular type of product you want to create & sell. Read the patents. Often, there is a way to tweak your design so that it is not an infringement. Popular patented/patent pending baby items that I see infringed upon all the time are the Bebe au Lait Nursing Cover and Taggies blankets.

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