Legal Advice needed

[sjm]

I have developed a unique art technique using PS and my friends and family who have seen it are encouraging me to market it. I have a name for the finished product, but I don't know how to protect myself from my idea been stolen.

Do I need to register a trademark?

If so, how do I do that?

Do I need a lawyer?

What about protection if/when this idea takes off?

TIA! and if and when I get my idea off the ground, RP will be the first to know!

[Doug Nelson]

Here you go, and good luck! Keep us posted.

[DannyRaphael]

If it was me, I'd pay a lot of attention to recommendation #5.

If your dream (and protecting it) is exceptionally important to you (and I suspect it is), giving too little heed to this step now could be something you considerably regret later.

While I'm not a big fan of shelling out $$ for legal advice (or anything else for that matter), this is something I to which I would give strong consideration -- if nothing else, do some additional research and/or call around a bit.

Depending on the practice, some legal firms offer a no (or low) cost initial visit.

Good luck...
~DannyR~

[Ed_L]

I didn't read much on the link Doug provided, but is it even possible to protect a technique? I certainly wish you all the luck in the world. Danny had a good suggestion (my opinion) about contacting a lawyer. That will at least let you sleep at night.

Ed

[platscha@cs.com]

You can't do anything to trademark or make it your own because it is made with someone elses program, at least that is what a friend of mine was told after paying a hefty fee to a patent attorney about just the same thing.
You can sell your action of the technique,
by setting up a web site or charge for the tutorial.
My friend thought he had the miracle effect from photoshop, ran it through the forum under an assumed name and in about 8 mins there were 20 or so people explaining exactly how it was done from a rather bad photo of the effect on a computer screen.
I have run across quite a few people that have sites that have wonderful effects, tutorials, actions and you pay a fee, alot of people pay it, perhaps that would be the way for you to go, then as you develope other things you could add to the site.
Good luck.

[sjm]

I'm afraid I didn't make myself clear in my original post. It's not a techinque that I want to protect, but rather the final item produced by my techinque.

It's really rather simple, but I've never seen anything like it. I plan to make up a prototype and take it around to some local gift shops to see what the response might be.

It's the name of my product that I'm interested in protecting.

Thanks again!

[platscha@cs.com]

Then you can trade mark the name, think you have to start an corp and then do it, not sure really.