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Originally Posted by YorkieChick1  Shana, I feel your pain!!! I have been designing clothes for 14 years, first as a children's clothing designer and for the last 4 years as a doggie designer and this has been going on forever!! I did a few Art & Wine festivals and Harvest festivals with my children's clothing company when I first started, on my second or third show I saw a booth that I thought was mine and it was a competitors!! She had not only stolen all my clothing designs, she also stole my whole booth design!! It looked like I had purchased 2 booths at the show but I hadn't!! I had met a patent attorney on one of my flights (I'm also a flight attendant for United) and he drew up a cease and desist letter and she stopped doing the shows but I found out from him that design patents aren't worth the paper they are printed on because the person only has to change the item by about 30% and they can sell it as their own!! That means that she could just sew a round collar, shorten the dress by an inch, add a different bow, etc... and it was different enough!! Now, I design for a dog company and we see the same thing. We will go to a trade show with our stuff and on the next trade show we will see that someone has taken an idea of ours and decided to make and market it!! It's frustrating but I have decided that because I am the one that has the creative mind and I am the one that can think of new ideas, I just try to stay one step ahead of the rest. They will always be one step behind the creativity!! They will be copying me and I will have thought of something else and I will be onto that!! That's the only thing that keeps me sane with it!! I design for companies that manufacture their products here in the U.S. and overseas and they do the best quality they can with the limitations. But when I hand make my own products, I sell them for the "hand made", "couture" price and most people who know quality could definitely tell the difference! I think you should try and support the creativity even if you have to pay a bit more for the hand made quality v.s. the factory product. Some people can't afford that and there is something out there for everyone!! |
That's horrible that people keep copying you and I do know it is somethign that will continue to happen forever and ever, not much can be done. What I used to like so much when I was first on YT is that people supported creativity and uniqueness and didnt tolerate people that copied but I have seen this change over the years and I long for the good ol' days, lol.