In the mid-1990's our client Design Ideas, Ltd. designed a series of figurative wire sculptures of butterflies, flowers, dragonflies and bugs to apply to various useful objects for home and office. The client coined the mark DOODLES® for these goods, and employs a group of craftspeople in rural China, well skilled in handwork, to manufacture the finished goods. The DOODLES® line became the design foundation of our client's extremely popular line of paper clips, containers and various other decorative items.

The DOODLES® products were so plentiful and so different that the cost of obtaining a design patent on each piece would have been prohibitive. Although we obtained a few design patents on the more unique pieces (e.g., The Beeline™ Votive - U.S. Pat. No. D458,799), and even a utility patent on a line of DOODLES® containers. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,398,058), DOODLES® products seemed a perfect match for copyright protection: they had aesthetic features that were separable from the functional attributes of the products, a high degree of artistic content and were not overwhelmingly utilitarian.

The competition - the "big box" retailers - bought and sold cheap knock-offs. We have successfully asserted these copyright registrations, design and utility patents against all knock-offs. Most recently, we secured a $774,000 jury verdict for willful copyright infringement on behalf of the client against a 600 store national mall-retailer for the DOODLES® designs depicted below:

U.S. Pat. No. 6,393,668
U.S. Pat. No. 6,398,058
Copyright Reg. No. VA 1-055-872
Copyright Reg. No. VA 1-055-871
Copyright Reg. No. VA 1-055-870

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