OK - time for me to jump in here.
First - Thank You both for taking it to Personal Messages - that showed a lot of respect for this board and shows you are both stand up men.
Now, for the copyright issue. There is no such thing as a copyright on a lanyard. None. Period. Please go to the US Patent and Copyright web site and read up on what a copyright actually is and you will see that I am correct.
Second - there ARE some patents on lanyards registered. But nothing that you guys are doing comes close to them. Again, you can research the US Patent office web site to find out.
Third - if you have an idea, and it is a unique idea - and you post it on the internet, your chances of ever getting a patent from it have vanished as once it is in the Public Domain, it cannot (normally) be patented. Again, do some research at the US Patent office web site.
Fourth - if ANYONE was going to get sued for the lanyards violating someones patents it would have been me. I was the first one to post a lanyard tutorial on the internet some 5 or 6 years ago. Since then I have posted 3 different ones. Two of them are on this web site. ANd I aint heard nothing yet form any legal scholars about it (they probably know I have more guns than most third world countries and that I dont really care that much for lawyers) but anyway -
If you get contacted by a lawyer who tells you that you have violated a patent, get it in writing, and then, take the needed action to resolve the problem. Otherwise, no one owns the knots, and even if they do - until we hear otherwise, we aren't going to argue the point here.
Remember, this is a friendly, sharing place. Respect each other and the people who read these post.
Once again, I want to thank you both for taking it to Personal Message - and I hope you got things worked out. You are both big assets to this forum and the folks trying to learn different lanyard techniques. Your knowledge is helping people you dont even know yet. And in the end, that is what it is all about.
Thank You
Al @ THO
