Dildomancer posted:

Dildomancer posted:

Like in many other fields, a lot of it comes down to how good your lawyer is. Current thinking (at least on Tumblr) is that you can't make a clone of a toy, or one with all the same basic features unless It is visually distinguishable. You can't name a toy the same thing as someone else has. "Ovipositor," "chimaera," "hybrid," all that stuff is taken so you need to be creative. The exception here is toys modeled directly off animals: if you're making a horse or dog dildo, it's going to look like the real thing, and that's a clear-cut case of prior art.

Now here's where it gets weird: some artists and their fans are also very protective of color schemes. I got some hatemail because I made a toy that was... red, black, and silver, I think, and unbeknownst to me, that was someone else's signature color scheme. Seems ridiculous to me, but then again, you can copyright and sell colors...