Its 2 in the morning, and you bolt wide awake with that Ah Ha! moment. You are convinced your idea is the next best thing to sliced bread, and you only tell a chosen few of your idea, maybe even going as far to make your own Grandmother sign a non-disclosure agreement. Then you rush out to file a patent or whatever necessary paperwork for protection. How do I know this? It happened to me a long time ago, in a completely different career.
In the art world, its a little different. Certainly I can become inspired with a new design of a necklace at 2 a.m., such as combining tiger's eye and lapis (this happened two nights ago). Or, I can come up with a new line after racking my brain of a unique niche so that I can get into retail stores. That's how The Healing Pet was born. I was tired of retail stores telling me that Anosia Custom Jewelry was nice, but "too similar to an artist that we currently have in the store." Only in Boulder...
Certainly The Healing Pet pet charms are unique. After consulting with an attorney, I found out protecting art design is a little different. Whether you are a writer, sculptor, or in my case, a jewelry designer, when you create your art and publish, it is automatically protected by copyright laws, whether or not you have a the written disclaimer with the copyright symbol saying to the effect of "All Rights Reserved." One can even go as far to register the works of art with the U.S. Copyright Office, which makes it more official in protection.
Being the responsible person that I am, I quickly registered my copyrights of each of my nine main pet charm designs. Unlike filing a patent, filing to register a copyright is fast, easy, affordable (only $35/application) and one does not need to hire an attorney to file.
From another start-up of mine (that Ah Ha! moment I referred to earlier), I filed a software patent of which I spent thousands of dollars and five years later, am waiting to hear the decision on the appeal to the office action of rejection. Sounds complicated, right? So, can I tell you how happy I was when I received 5 of my 9 copyright certificates on my pet charms? And it was only 6 weeks after filing the application. I thought all was good with the other 4 applications, until last week, I received an email from an officer at the U.S. Copyright Office asking numerous questions. To be helpful, I cited my other certificates, hoping it would help my case.
Noting could have been more of the opposite. She called me several hours after I sent my email, and yes, this is a real life person that I was talking to in Washington D.C.! Apparently, long story short, I was infringing upon myself as the to-be registered designs were too similar to those already registered. As I mentioned above, I have a pretty decent knowledge of I.P. (Intellectual Property) so after I hung up the phone, I just had to laugh. Was I going to send myself a cease and desist letter? Sue myself? The one good thing that came from the conversation and is that I got my logo registered. I guess the $140 (4 apps @ $35 each) wasn't wasted after all.
The point of me writing this blog is to encourage artists to educate yourself as to how you can protect your art designs. Your work is your own and while most artists are respectful of originality, big business may not be so nice.
Yours in inspiration and creation from the soul,
Jen
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