Permission when creating accessories

[jkendrick]

If you are creating accessories for an established product, do you have to worry about permissions, licensing or anything or can you just do it. It would seem, for example, that creating a bumper sticker for a car (perhaps because it can be for ANY car) would not require any sort of special permissions, but creating an accessory specifically for an iPod would. Not everyone DOES, of course, but are you SUPPOSED to? Could you be sued or served with a cease and desist? If so, could you avoid this by simply not referencing the product specifically by brand name, even if it is obviously for that product. Again using the iPod example (and no, I am not thinking about an iPod accessory - it is merely an example), if you said you had a cover for an "MP3 device" yet it is clearly shaped for an iPod.

Thanks!

[kamakiri]

Pretty gray area there. It really depends on the product. In general you are fine. The problem comes in when you try to market your product. If you are a big company and can pay Target to place your MP3 case next to the Ipods, you are set. If you are small, no one is going to search Google for "MP3 player cover", but thousands are looking for "ipod cover".

In the second case you are specifically using the work ipod to profit from. That is where the problems come from.

Options? There is probably a way to get the 'official license' to use the ipod name. Without even googleing it, I can say it costs far more than it is worth.

My take? Seriously. If you ridea hits it big there will be copy cats. It probably has a lifeline of 4-5 months before it is dead. The next ipods come out shaped differently, 50 competitors spring up over night (it happens, just read Kiyosaki's stories about his Hawaiin wallet business that tanked overnight). Don't bither with the issues. Get your product to the market and plan for a short horizon. Set a goal of 20-30,000 units sold and then be done with it (or try to sell the idea, but lots a luck there).

[Omega]

jkendrick,

Personally, I would hire a lawyer for that.

However, my non-lawyer opinion is that, since you will be a small company, there is nothing to worry about. The big companies even like that, since it is free publicity.

[jkendrick]

Thanks. Yeah, as I said, it is not an iPod accessory. I was merely using that as an example because everyone is familiar with the product and the huge range of accessories. AND, seemingly, some have "Made for iPod" on them and some don't (though by their shape you can clearly see they WERE made for iPod). Point being: are some paying and some not? What is the legal ramifications of NOT paying? I mean regardless, you would be able to buy adwords for "ipod accessories" right?

FWIW, the product we are accessorizing is a niche product (about 700,00-1M users/owners of the product we are accessorizing) and currently there are no spopnsored links for the terms we are looking at. We definitely see a risk of competitors springing up if we're successful, though.

That said, I'm still wondering if anyone has experience in this sort of thing. Should I just use the general name (e.g. MP3 player) rather than the brand name (e.g. iPod) on our site and in our marketing materials? Or am I worrying needlessly? We'll use the brand name Adword regardless.