Protecting your work trademark/patent/copyright

[Takeru691]

Hi guys and girls.

I was wandering if any of you is taking special steps to protect your work and design to get stolen by a third party. Also do you guys register your touchmark/maker mark in order to be the only one to use it? 

This question come from the fact that i"m designing a touchmark for myself and i did some research on the design that i want but i don't wan to take something that another blacksmith use already. Let's say i register my touchmark as a trademark and put it on my work does it protect my work against people who want to take credit for it.

Any Blacksmith/lawyer in the place who has a better knowledge of this?

[SpankySmith]

I think I recall some earlier discussions on this topic, you might do a search of the forum to see what comes up.  Protecting your work as original is gonna be tough since as far as I can see pretty much ALL blacksmithing either copies or builds on what others have done/are doing.  Heck, most of what little I've learned so far has come from looking at someone else's piece and attempting to replicate it, to see if I had the skills (or could somehow find them) to do so.  The really amazing/original stuff, like what Scrapartoz or some of the awesome knifemakers represented here produce, well... good luck replicating ANY of that!  

On the touchmark question, I believe there is a U.S. touchmark registry, I think maybe ABANA maintains one?   Someone can correct me if that's wrong.  In Alabama the Alabama Forge Council maintains a touchmark registry on their website, I'm guessing other states' groups do the same -  you might look into whether there is a similar thing in Canada.    

[ThomasPowers]

Here in the USA such protections rely on your willingness to fund suits against transgressors.  How many tens of thousands of dollars are you willing to pay for each infringement?  You have to prosecute each one even against people who can't pay because if you let one pass then you lose your rights to it.  (I am not a lawyer; but this is what I understand about the state of things in the USA; I can't speak as to how things work in Canada.)