I am a retired hobbyist knife maker. I do not intend to make a living making knives. I would like to make enough to be able to upgrade some equipment.

My question is how do I get a name I can put on my knives? I had thought about just using my name & city/state, D.R. Vincent/Salem, OR. How do can I find out if here is anyone out there with my name & initials who is making knives? Or, does it matter (I would think it would)? Do I need to register my name or copyright it?

What is the procedure & where do I go from here?

Due to disabilities & health reasons I will not be able to travel all over the country and do the knife show circuit, nor do I have the production capabilities to produce the quantity of knives necessary to do that. I just want to make knives and sell a few, and want my own name on them. I can sell some through the local cutlery stores.

I would really appreciate any help from the more experienced hands here in the forum.

Thanks for the help,
Dale Vincent
dalervincent@comcast.net

Dale,

I do not know anyone that has TRADEMARKED their name for knifemaking. It is possible but I do not know anyone that has.

You can use your name, you are allowed to take credit for your work. If "D.R. Vincent/Salem, OR" is trademarked I would be surprised. If it is used the people with the trademark would have to contact you and ask you to stop using it. If that happens you change the name. I went to http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchstr&state=ml9920.1.1 and searched
Vincent and Salem at the same time and did not see it. The search return all trademarks with the two words in it. None of the marks associated with the two words had your proposed mark.

Copyrights are different if you write a song or a poem or a book you get a copyright. If you want to "Brand" something like "Disney" or "Texaco" you need a trademark.

I think you are good to go on your proposed name.

What Bob says is 100%. I think that even if your name is being trademarked there would be some fair use or some such. I stayed out in Salem for a while, by the way, but I mostly lived down south of there in Corvallis.

Good question....

Good info Bob.

Here's another question along the same lines; Is there a registry(say, among custom makers?) for makers marks? Mainly the ones that are symbols, or initials, instead of names. I'm useing "ITK" for "Ice Tigre Knives" , but I'd like to be able to know if someone else is already useing "ITK".

G.

There have been several major threads on the subject of maker's marks. One big point is that the closer to your name the easier time people will have finding you. There isn't a month when there isn't someone on the forums posting a question on "who is this maker?"

While I'm not an old hand I've got some advice. For getting your pieces out there, while there is nothing to substitute getting out there and shacking hands, you might try (like me) of using a site that uses consignment. I don't want to mess around with credit card/PayPal accounts, photos, webpages, etc, so I send them to A.T. Barr. He takes 22%, but given the other factors it's worth it as a hobbyist not to have to deal with bounced checks or stolen credit cards. He also gets them out to all the major shows.

Here's A.T.'s site:
www.customknives.com/

Jim

Thanks everyone, this is very helpful, especially the web sites.

Thanks again,
Dale

Gary, good question.

I recently started using my first two initials and last name. I had thought about using my last name only, but with Micheal Price knives out there, I didn't want any confusion. I then contacted the other person with the same first initial and last name from the forum, prizzm, and checked with him, to ensure that I wouldn't step on anything he had planned. Would be nice to have a registry though.

--Carl

I'm thinking of changing to "ITK" with "G.Blessing" under it, I think it is good to have your name on it. I might look into organizing a registry,.,.,.,.... maybe a winter project.

Another one for selling by comission is Paul Vandine, http://www.circlepknives.net/
He's a member here, and a few members here use him. Myself included, I don't have his permission to tell his comission %, but its slightly lower that Mr. Barr.

G.

Ken warner's book that comes out every year has makers name, what their mark is and the price range of their knives.

I have a knifemakers logo/mark link on my web page started up and running for any knife maker to put their logo and info as a reference page. Check my page out and see if you would like to participate. The more knife sites, the more references we would be able to accumulate. All knife makers should have a reference on their logos and marks.

Jerry Perkins