OT - Legal Advice wanted

[Malcolm]

Guys,

Im after some guidelines on the best way (and possibly the cheapest) to protect my design and tooling of the AS350 body for the piccolo. I don't have the funding to take out pattents, but wondered if there was a simple way to "register" the design so that if it were to be copied I could safeguard my investment and possibly stop any other party producing more.

[jeffery]

Not sure if this will help but heres a link that mite help you on the way.
http://www.patent.gov.uk/

Thanks,
Jeff

By the time your design would have passed the patent pending stage i am sure many will have copied, improved etc etc upon it. Although to be honest i think 99% of people would not have the skill or time dedication needed to try and copy it. Look how many variations on a theme there are in the pic upgrade parts all with a little tweak here and there rendering any patents worthless. If i wanted a scale fus i for one would rather order it from the manufacturer (yourself) than be bothered trying to copy it.........Cheers Neal

ohhhhhhhh i nearly forgot, its high prices that force people into copying etc, if the price is kept low and fair you will get many orders and to copy it would not make economic sense!

[patmore]

Malcolm,
Post your designs to yourself and use the stamped, unopened envelope as to proof the date of your design should a case be taken to court.

It's not the best but is a fool proof way of dating your design.

[reubenwilcock]

Well presumably you log all your work in a Log Book which is dated at every entry. This is very useful at proving you created your design. Likewise you could send the design to your aunt in Australia registered post and tell her not to open it (or just to yourself!). Either way Copyright of your designs is implicit - i.e. you own the copyright of any designs you make the moment you make them (and up to 70 years or something after you die??). But that does little to stop people copying your designs at the end of the day because they can just draw up their own similar but different designs.

The only way you can protect your designs is to get patents but then these have to be written by proper patent agents to make sure that they are the correct degree of vagueness and specificness so as you cover you design and ones like them. Its a costly buisness. And at the end of the day if the patents are violated then its unlikely you will have the funds necessary to take it to court against big companies. So its a bit poo to be honest.

Best advice is to make people have some normal good reasons to buy from YOU - i.e. excellent service and low cost and regular developments. This is your best hope.

>>to protect my design and tooling of the AS350 body for the piccolo.<<

ROFLMAO! The simplest way to protect your design is not to market it. What no one know they can't copy. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

That said, your tooling should be protected since they are physical objects. Lock them up in a safe and no one should be able to steal them.

As far as "your" design of the AS350 I think Aerospatiale has first dips. You are copying the Aerospatiale design of the Ecureil afterall.

As far as adaptation of the Aerospatiale Ecureil for use on the Ikarus Piccolo you will need a whole lot of attorneys (solicitors in your case) to follow you around to fight anything that looks remotely like an Ecureil.

Bottomline, it is simply a matter of costs and benefits. How much money are you willing to spend to protect how much money are you projecting to lose.

Do you realize how many Jet Ranger fuselages are out there for either a 30 size glow fueled heli or a 60 sized glow fueled heli? All anyone has to do is to find a 3 view drawing of a Jet Ranger and some pictures and they can make their own fueslages out of carbon fiber, fiberglass, styrene, balsa, BAS, polycarbonate, what have you.

I have not seen anyone claiming the others are stealing their design.

Of course as a hobbiyist we evaluate the fuselages base on ease of assembly, ease of installation, quality of product and scale integrity. These items will depend on the manufacturer and you can steal that.

You can't claim that XYZ is stealing my design because he/she is making the design with more scale integrity to the full scale version.

So I think you are going over board in thinking that your intellectual properties are worth so much that you need to protect them all the time.

You don't see anyone stealing Morley helicopter's designs. The reason is because they are so terrible it is not worth stealing. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Now you know why I didn't want to market my Bell 212 Malcolm! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] I knew it wasn't as simple as just 'selling' it! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Hoverup]

Nige may jump in and contradict what I'm about to type, but I think ModelTek is a perfect example of a parallel case. Nige has been selling Cobra and Apache files worldwide for months now and although I am personally aware of only one individual attempting to sell his product without permission, in the main most all of us have respected his intellectual property rights. I wouldn't worry too much about the AS-350 you are planning to produce as it will be the first into the marketplace and will sell as long as it is the best micro AS-350 for the money.
JMHO [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Malcolm]

Guys,

Thanks for the input, I'm in the process of posting the drawings to myself as Neil suggested, well its the cheapest way of proving the date of the design. Oh and Reuben, yes I have kept a project diary too.

Bones, yes you are correct in that Eurocopter probably have the full rights to the design, this is one of the questions I have put to the patent office as it is not clear on things like changing a scale etc. The example the patent office give is of a teapot with a design on it !! Again, there is the issue of change, if someone took a design and modified it is the original still protected, or could you class the new design as being different ?

Its all a bit ironic really, as I probably would never be in the finacial position to take anyone or any compant to court if they did copy it.

Thanks once again for your comments