Sunday, February 14, 2010

Redesigned Teething Toys

If you had read my previous post you know that I and other sellers have had problems with a certain patent. Due to this, I have decided to redesign my teething toys to prevent etsy from pulling my toy sets yet again. I must admit, it does irritate me to no end that I have to do this because of this woman who seems to have the idea that no one other than herself may use ribbon loops on any baby items.

Be that as it may, I did sew on my ribbon loops in another fashion before I decided to just redesign them altogether. Since her patent reads that the ribbon has to be sewn INSIDE a seam, I decided to sew them to the OUTSIDE back of the toy. Now, this probably would've worked, but there was a bit more work involved and it was a bit more difficult to topstitch neatly around the toy while making sure the ribbon stayed in place.
So, because of this, I just decided that a redesign was in order. So, my NEWLY designed teething toys only have ONE ribbon loop that holds the teething ring. Because I can no longer put more loops around the toy, I decided I needed to add something to make up for the loss of the ribbons. So I put a squeaker inside! Maybe babies would actually prefer the squeaker to the ribbon loops anyway. After all, they do like making noise lol.
So, there you have it. And to be quite honest, I hope I sell more of these than "you-know-who" sells of her TAGGIE blankets and toys! So there!

4 comments:

Lina said...

Hi, I don't understand why your item was removed. I just checked ebay and etsy and there are loads of people selling 'taggie' blankets and other items. Why did they singly you out.
I wanted to make some matching tag blankets to go with my baby sets and now I don't knoe

Lil' Bit Sassy said...

It's not only me. There are a lot of sellers that have had their items pulled. Seems that her patent is so broad that it doesn't seem to matter size, shape, fabric, etc. If it has ribbon loops, it's pulled. I can't even believe the patent office gave her such a broad patent in the first place.

Lina said...

It does seem a bit crazy. I wonder if anyone has been gutsy enough to let her try and actually sue someone.
I just looked at a brief description on a UK patent site and it said that it has to be something that no one else has ever done before and apparently this is not the case. Surely people have been making blankets and tags for the kids and grandkids for ages.
Wish someone would put these girls(taggies) in their place.

Lil' Bit Sassy said...

That is the reason people are so upset--because we know she didn't come up with this design herself. If it can be proven (by pictures, articles, etc) that these were around BEFORE her patent in 2003, then it will make her patent null and void. I've been searching, but so far no luck.