Intellectual property for makers, guilds, and studios

Defending Creative Genius

Your designs are your legacy — let’s make them legally unmistakable. Trademarks, copyrights, and industrial designs, shaped around the realities of artisan work. Who else will guard the details that make your craft recognisable?

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Built for original work

Studio marks, patterns, prototypes, and names
Audit Register Monitor Enforce

Our Intellectual Property Arsenal

A bento-style strategy, not a one-size-fits-all form.

What should be protected first? We map the asset, the audience, and the risk, then build the filing path around your business reality.

Comprehensive IP Strategy

Protect the whole maker lifecycle.

An original motif on a scarf, a signature clasp on a bracelet, a guild name on the workshop door — each can carry value far beyond the item itself. We look at creation, launch, copying risk, and enforcement together, because isolated filings can miss the point.

The goal is simple. Keep your name, look, and method tied to you, not to imitators who arrive later.

Create
Clear
Register
Enforce

How We Secure Your Work

Four practical steps, built for real studios.

There’s no mystery here. A clean process beats a rushed filing every time, especially when your catalogue grows faster than your admin tray.

1. IP Audit

We catalogue names, marks, patterns, packaging, product forms, and online assets, then separate the protectable from the practical. What already belongs to your business?

Desktop view

A tidy path from first sketch to enforcement.

A good filing strategy is like a workshop bench: everything has its place. We plan around Canadian requirements, marketplace risk, and how your products actually move through the world.

Rights mapping Clearance search Registration plan
Worktable with sketches, material samples, and legal notes arranged beside a jeweller's bench

3. Filing & Registration

We prepare the application, then handle the details that can stall a claim. Small errors cost time. Why invite them?

2. Search & Clearance

A name can look available and still be risky. We check for conflicts before you print labels, launch a store, or announce the guild.

4. Monitoring & Enforcement

After launch, the watch begins. We keep an eye on copying, misuse, and confusingly similar marks, then act with proportion and purpose.

Common IP Questions from Makers

Straight answers, no legal fog.

Clients often ask the same sharp questions. Fair enough. The rules can feel abstract until they touch a real object on a real shelf.

Often, the answer depends on whether the design is artistic expression or mostly functional shape. A necklace sketch, decorative engraving, or sculptural element may be protected; a purely utilitarian feature may not be. We’ll sort that line carefully, because the distinction matters.

A trademark points to source: your name, logo, or sometimes a distinctive brand identifier. A design patent, or industrial design in Canada, protects the look of the product itself. So if the chair profile is the selling point, design protection may be the better fit. If the maker’s name is the asset, trademark is the place to start.

Start by documenting authorship, dates, and how the pattern is used in commerce. Copyright may help, contract terms can restrict use by collaborators, and careful enforcement can stop wholesale copying. We don’t chase every small imitation, but we do target conduct that harms the market.

Not every name must be registered, but many guilds benefit from it when they trade publicly, host events, or licence their brand. Registration can strengthen your position if another group uses something confusingly similar. Why leave a reputation asset exposed?

Practical next step

Bring us the sketch, the mark, or the pattern.

We’ll tell you what can be protected, what needs clearing, and where the risk sits. That first conversation often saves months of repair work.

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What we usually protect

  • Brand names and maker’s marks
  • Original drawings, product photos, and packaging text
  • Distinctive product shapes and surface treatments
  • Guild names, licence terms, and approved collaborations