[cj]

I'm working on an (what I believe to be) innovative new design for a holster/carrying method. My concern is, once I've made this available, what can be done about copycats?

I'd just be starting out and extremely small time initially, but established industries would be in an excellent position to adapt their construction methods and mass produce, thus losing all of my development effort.

Is there any approach to copyrighting a design? I'm not certain the approach would be patentable since it's really leveraging a number of existing ideas and technologies, just arranging them in a unique way to provide a great option for users.

 

[cj]

Thanks for the great advice all. I actually work for a company that automatically gains first option on all of my patents, so even if my concept was novel enough, they'd have first dibs...so free legal fees, but they own it...although it WOULD be pretty funny to see the face of some unscrupulous type walking into arbitration or court to see the team of lawyers they'd be facing

But really it's just a unique combination of materials that, when seen should make most people go, "Duh! Why haven't they done it that way all along?", and not limited to being just a holster, more of an entire system, thus making it easy to use in lots of applications.

Hmm, maybe I will set up a short chat with one of our lawyers just in case...

 

[cj]

Wow wow wow. Great info all...I had really just hoped for an idea or two, and possibly some thoughts based on experience...you all have far exceeded what I could have hoped!

To be a little more clear, this isn't simply just cutting leather in a new shape or anything, it's looking at things in a slightly different way and making what I think are some pretty useful improvements. I seriously doubt it's novel enough to be patentable (but that's for my company lawyer to decide), but I KNOW it would take me a while to ramp up to competitive quality to what else is out there...creating an opportunity for someone to modify their processes to basically do it better.

Maybe the best idea might be to just work with someone else out there who DOES have the production part down, but meanwhile I'll be working on some samples to better test the idea and it's possibilities.

 

[cj]

Wow wow wow. Great info all...I had really just hoped for an idea or two, and possibly some thoughts based on experience...you all have far exceeded what I could have hoped!

To be a little more clear, this isn't simply just cutting leather in a new shape or anything, it's looking at things in a slightly different way and making what I think are some pretty useful improvements. I seriously doubt it's novel enough to be patentable (but that's for my company lawyer to decide), but I KNOW it would take me a while to ramp up to competitive quality to what else is out there...creating an opportunity for someone to modify their processes to basically do it better.

Maybe the best idea might be to just work with someone else out there who DOES have the production part down, but meanwhile I'll be working on some samples to better test the idea and it's possibilities.