Not a laser, but related: You can buy iPhone skins of colorful designs from DecalGir.

Recently, Etchstar launched. This service has some similarity to the model I am working on with my little side project Etch Connection — which has stalled horribly since starting b-school. I had spoken to a guy over at Etchstar (previously iStyleCustom) about my providing consumer generated designs for use by his laser etching service, but they have gone off and created their own supply of designs. Their approach looks pretty slick: they are an authorized Apple seller and therefore, you can order your new Macbook or ipod from them and choose one of their designs to be etched. Or you can mail it in, which I would imagine is not a terribly popular choice. Or you can go to their LA location and get it done. Designers will soon be able to submit their own designs as well.

With Etch Connection, I am hoping to provide a centralized, service-provider-agnostic source of designs which have been submitted by anyone. At this point, if you live in New York or Boston, you don’t have much to work with in terms of designs unless you know some artist types or are one yourself. That’s where Etch Connection should come it.

If I ever launch it, that is.

Personalizing stuff with lasers is catching on…. is a post from: co>innovative

Head on over to Etch Connection and enter your email address if you are interested in finding out when the site launches. Then you can be the baddest cat on the block with a laser etched cell, iPod, or MacBook.

Etch Connection Development continues… is a post from: co>innovative

Outsourcing my web development is a post from: co>innovative

Threadless (click on “Legal terms” at the bottom of the page.) deals with designs submitted for open online evaluation, so their policy is the closest to what I will be working with.

Threadless.com retains exclusive rights to the submitted design, if chosen, for printing and selling on clothing. Threadless.com also retains rights to the design itself for use on the Threadless.com website, and any Threadless.com promotional material. The participant will keep ownership of the submitted design. The participant may display or archive the design in a portfolio or personal collection, but may not sell or reproduce the design for commercial purposes for ninety (90) days after the design has completed scoring. In addition, during this period, the participant cannot submit the design to another company to be potentially produced.

It goes on to say that the work must be solely owned by and the original work of the submitter. Further, if applicable, Threadless will register the design with the US Copyright office with “the designer as the primary copyright owner with Threadless.com being listed as an additional copyright claimant.” (Hmm, one consideration for Etch Connection along these lines: One of the etchers is in London. Does that matter in terms of copyright considerations?)

A similar section follows describing the slogan submissions (Threadless deals in both text and graphic submissions), but the main difference is that Threadless owns all submissions regardless of whether they are printed or not.

Instructables provides a forum for anyone to post pictures, video, and text descriptions of how to make and do stuff. They start out with several pages that basically say: don’t lie to us, don’t do anything illegal, we can change anything on this site at any time, and this info is provided without warranty for your reading pleasure. Given that this is a purely informational/community site, “the author retains all patent, trademark, and copyright to all Content posted within available fields, and is responsible for protecting those rights, but is not entitled to the help of the Instructables staff in protecting such Content.” So submitters must both own all of their own content and didn’t steal it from anyone else, but if something is used without the author’s permission due to their posting it to Instructables, Instructables is not at fault.

But at the same time:

You grant Instructables the world-wide, royalty free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, publicly perform and publicly display such Content solely for the purposes of providing and promoting Instructables.

I suppose that means they can write a book based on Instructables content without paying the author.

This could be useful:

If you believe that your work has been copied and is accessible on this site in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, you may notify us by providing our copyright agent with the following information in writing.

(Yikes, they even protect themselves from the possibility of users experiencing siezures as a result of certain light patterns viewed on the screen.)

Crowdspirit
Although Crowdspirit hasn’t launched, they do give an overview of how they will handle rights.

The simplest way for CrowdSpirit to manage this is to hold the IP and to have standard terms and conditions based on a person’s contribution – e.g. a certain value associated with the original idea, another value for the refinements, another for the distribution etc.

Apparently all IP will be the property of Crowdspirit, which makes sense. Will be interesting to see the exact legal language of this when it comes out.

Cambrian House
Hmmm… IP rights don’t seem to be spelled out in their terms and conditions… curious.

Intellectual Property Rights Considered (This post: only for law freaks) is a post from: co>innovative

And the winner is… is a post from: co>innovative

I know you’re all just waiting for some ridiculously awesome designs to etch onto your laptops/cell phones/ipods. I’m working on it.

On the sweet laser business front… is a post from: co>innovative