Snuggie... The Great little Re-invention of a Blanket...
 

Full of interesting Marketing spin-offs & ideas worth studying...

Sometime's all it really takes is a very Simple idea... To create a Consumer phenomenon...

As with any Successful product... Especially the ones that Somehow make it into the Big time Infomercial advertising circuits and campaigns...

Comes the Good, the bad, the ugly and the intruiging... ;)
http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=snuggie
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...G=Search&meta=
https://www.getsnuggie.com/
http://snuggiesightings.com/snuggie/

Phil

Re: Snuggie... The Great little Re-invention of a Blanket...
 

Here's a link to a newspaper report that should be of interest to business-minded folks like the ones who hang around here.

This guy in suburban New Jersey had been marketing a nearly identical product on his own web site for a few years. The blankets were sewn by his wife ...

I don't know that anybody is accusing the big company of stealing the idea ... but there's probably a good lesson here re. protecting your "invention" or your intellectual property.

Here's the link:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/loca...s-success.html

Now, my question ... what could this guy have done, if anything, to protect himself? Would this have been a trademarkable/patentable idea? Or no?

Robert J.

Re: Snuggie... The Great little Re-invention of a Blanket...
 

Robert,

Thanks for bringing up the subject of Basically, other related invention products that are out there in the Marketplace...

Surprisingly... Many inventions, we might think are Protected and don't get reproduced...

But the Truth of the matter is that Many ideas and inventions Do... Get re-Created into Differently designed products Simply by just making a few particular changes...

There are All kinds of Specialty products that go through similar problems regarding Design etc... Find the Winners, get the Marketing rights and Make things happen... :)

Really Not that much different than “Twists” on misc. information related products and other business ideas and business models...

The invention and article you posted is a Perfect example...

Due to all the legal costs along with some misunderstanding on Patent information and laws they've probably made the Best decision at this time by just continuing with Things as they are for the time being Unless something should Change in the near future for whatever reason...

To basically answer your question, what could this guy have done, if anything, to protect himself? Would this have been a trademarkable/patentable idea? Or no?

Better knowledge, maybe more Legal representation would have helped at the time...

Here's just a general Overview regarding the issue that's important to be Aware of when Starting the process with inventions... ;)
http://www.inventorfraud.com/inventiondate.htm
http://www.patent-ideas.com/inventiondate.htm
http://invention.lifetips.com/cat/61339/invention-help/
http://www.frompatenttoprofit.com/scientificjournal.htm

Phil

Re: Snuggie... The Great little Re-invention of a Blanket...
 

Awesome, as always, Phil!

Kind of an interesting business story all around ... the incredible success of this odd little blanket-with-arms.

And the little guy seems to have been moderately successful in his own right. ... of course, he'll have a hard time battling them on price-point alone! I've seen snuggies for $19.95, and a buy-one-get-one offer along with it.

Robert J.

Re: Snuggie... The Great little Re-invention of a Blanket...
 

Nowadays, is there even such a thing as original? Well, these products surely deserve some credit but a lot of them have not been protected by the inventor and by the law. Something needs to be done in order to protect them.