I needed a fire pit a couple years ago. My friends make food smokers from old propane tanks. Cut the end off and down drops a bowl. Perfect! Big and heavy duty, it suited my preferences well. My friends saw mine and asked me to make more, so I did. This looked like a good small business as there is so much Chinese junk out there and nothing well made. I did my research and the patent and copyright offices did NOT have anything listed with them on record. I asked an IP lawyer if I could patent or copyright this and she said no, utilitarian objects cannot be copyrighted. Spoons, bowls, fire bowls, things you use are not available to copyright. So I went to work anyway without any protection. Unger's work, several others doing the exact same thing and mine have several similar features but the majority of mine are very different. John threatened to sue me in Michigan courts for everything I own and the ONLY reason I filed was to protect myself and not have to go to Michigan but fight it here in Nashville where I live. John recently filed for copyrights and by his own words found it hard to get these fire bowls accepted but finely got them through by describing them only as 3-D sculpture without any other purpose. One of those copyrights is on an original piece of mine. John has clearly benefited from his creative, fact fuzzy and emotional story. His previous money making fund drive was to build him a new studio in Michigan, now he is planning a move to Texas after this money maker is over. I have offered him an opportunity to resolve this in front of a judge in a settlement conference and an out of court setting. Perhaps we can work something out in person that should have been handled by a telephone call.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Rick D. Wittrig.
FirePitArt and Rick Wittrig
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Rick D. Wittrig.
Submit a story now.