Before you read this realize that I am not a lawyer - just someone who has
worked with them...

We develop software and here is how we have protected our work.

1.) Copyrighted the name of the software as well as any "lingo" that we
developed (this is not cheap if you really want to protect your
implementation). Note that we needed to be careful only to attempt to
copyright truly unique words, expressions, and acronyms.

2.) Copyrighted the first 1/3 and last 1/3 of the code. This theoretically
protects the actual code we have written from being stolen and used by
someone else. Note that this does not protect someone reading our code,
understanding what it does, and then implementing it a different way but
achieving the same results.

3.) Trademarked any and all logos.

4.) Applied for patents unique designs that we wanted to protect. This is
by far the longest and most expensive of the processes but the only way to
protect R&D investments.

If you want to do this right, hire a lawyer that specializes in this type of
thing. Unfortunately that is prohibitively expensive unless you are really
trying to protect an investment. It cost us approximately $2000 to protect
a piece of software.

Finally, for what it is worth, our lawyer said something that impressed upon
me. It was: "You cannot protect an idea but you can protect the expression
of that idea"

How all of this pertains to woodworking plans, I am not sure. My suggestion
would be to contact a small law firm that specializes in copyright/trademark
law and ask them. You can usually get a little free advice when you talk to
these guys, especially if they are small.

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______________________
WoodJunkie
"Thomas Mitchell" wrote in message
...
I know there have been a lot of requests for sites offering free
designs, and as much as I like to find free designs and use them, I'm
interested in learning how to protect designs/products. I wouldn't mind
offering plans to be used on a personal basis, but would hate to see an
original idea mass produced. Does anyone know what's involved in
protecting designs or products? I read a little about copyrights and I'm
not sure that copyright is applicable. Architectural works are covered,
but is a design of a piece of furniture, for example, an architectural
work? Under the not protected list on from
www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wwp is this inclusion :

"Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles,
discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description,
explanation, or illustration"

Does anyone know?