Using your name as your makers mark

johnnym

johnnym

Joined
Dec 13, 2005
Messages
170
I have a curious question regarding the use of your name as your makers mark. It seems like a good idea since anyone that views the knife knows immediately who made it.

However my questions relates more to liability. If you sell your knives though the relative protection of a LLC or corporation, does having your name on the knife allow an attorney to pierce the corporate shield leaving you more liable should some DA lop off their finger with your knife?

-John
 
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I would be inclined to dismiss your question if we lived in a society where everyone took personal responsibility for their own stupidity. Clearly, that is not the world we live in, so your question has some legitimacy.

Still, I'm inclined to think that most knife makers are small enough businesses that no self respecting attorney would build a lawasuit against someone to take the last $3 out of their account. If the number was higher, they surely would, though.
 
tryppyr said:
Still, I'm inclined to think that most knife makers are small enough businesses that no self respecting attorney would build a lawasuit against someone to take the last $3 out of their account. If the number was higher, they surely would, though.
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I think that you may be missing the point here, it is not about going after the business, but the individual and their assets.

The reason that I brought this issue up is because i am looking into starting an LLC and an attorney friend looked at my name on the knife and commented that he thought it was an issue. So i was curious if this subject has ever come up for anyone else.
 
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Has anyone successfully sued a knife maker for injuries sustained?

The risks of a knife are self evident. If you do not sell to children you do not need to worry. If the knife were to fail in normal use ie be defective it would be another matter.

Great topic by the way, lots of folks will get themselves in a tizz, a few will add disclaimers, a few will enrich lawyers getting advice...

Tryppyr - There are self respecting attorneys? :p
 
If I were going to sue, I'm going to sue the corporation AND you as an individual AND your wife AND anyone else named as a director-problem solved.


Just be judgement proof, own nothing.
Most knifemakers have that approach covered.




knife=1
knives=plural
 
I was always taught to put my name on a blade to show I stand behind it and to eliminate confusion about the maker. There's a lot of threads on BF that start with "Does anyone know a maker who's mark is a squiggle through a cross on a batwing throwing star background?" Of course there are a few makers who's mark leaves very little doubt, Don Fogg's chrysanthemum, Don Hanson's fish and Larry Feugen's LF are the first one's that come to mind.

If I was sued they'd have judgement on my forge, hammers, files, pile of sandpaper, barstock, $50 HF drill press and some sheath making supplies.
 
Contact the American Knife & Tool Institute and KnifeRights.org and see what they have to say on the matter.

I'm not an attorney but I think the likelihood of a maker getting sued for someone cutting themselves is right up there with the chances of GoodYear getting sued because someone ran over their own foot.
 
I feel there are two issues here.
1) Is there any real liability? To my knowledge, no.
2) Is using a real name as the product name a risk to the owner of the corporation? If that were so there would be no Sears and Roebucks, Ford Motor company, or Ken Onion/Buck/Moran knives. Since the vast majority of knives are sold with the name of the maker on them, this is clearly not an issue. All it should take is the registry of the company trading as the desire name. John Doe Knife Company,LLC - trading as John Doe Knives....product mark "John Doe".

Realize that even if you become an LLC, that can't stop a person from suing you, your company, your shop dog, and the mailman who delivered the knife......getting a judge/jury to agree with him is another thing.
 
Even frivolous lawsuits can cost money to fight. You might get the court to award those costs back to you... if you can sustain them long enough to get to that point. :)

What a racket.
 
Thanks for all of the replies guys. That's what i get for having an attorney for a friend (he is not even a corporate attorney, he is a patent attorney). I did not think it was an issue but figured that i would run it past the folks that would know.


P.S.
Count, thank you for the grammar check, i knew that your value went far beyond posting the standard reply to the newbies. :)
 
Lawyers (at least, in this situation) are primarily concerned with mitigating legal risk, just as dentists are concerned with the health of your teeth. Life is about evaluating risk, and balancing it against everything else — "everything else" includes pride, tradition, and aesthetics.

You did the exact right thing by being informed of potential risk, then spending the time to evaluate it; now you get to decide how to act based on your knowledge of the risk.

Thumbs up! The usual way this happens is someone comes to a forum asking for legal advice, and (with any luck!) someone correctly tells them to talk to an attorney :D
 
Is George Foreman liable if I burn my house down with his grill? More to the point, is Ken Onion liable for damages from a Kershaw blade? Putting your name on it means nothing. Especially if your name/mark is a trademark of your company.
 
If you continue to use the same mark then my understanding is that you have a claim to it being your trademark. You could file for a trademark, or simply make the claim that it is a trade mark or trade name (because you've been using it "in commerce"), should the need arise. I haven't filed any personally, but I'm also nowhere near a full-time maker.
 
I'm not a Lawyer, nor do I play one, but I can remember that McDonald's was sued over hot coffee. She didn't know that it was hot.
So, I can hear it now, "My client didn't know the knife was sharp". I'm not saying it would fly in court, but crazy things have happened. People are always looking for scapegoats.
 
McDonald's was not sued because she didn't know the coffee was hot, but because they did know. They had been involved in previous cases showing the coffee was hotter than it should be at point of sale, and the one woman, who was burned more severely than if they had cooled their serving temperature, sued them successfully.

Knifemakers are not sued because their names are on the knives. That's partly why corporations are formed, to deflect complaints to the artificial entity and away from the individuals working there. But even individual knifemakers working alone, posting knives for sale here, and selling them as their individual selves, don't get sued when someone cuts themselves. Do you? Why not?

Knives are designed and constructed to cut whatever gets in the way of the edge. It's not a defect, it's a function, and the failure is on the part of the user, not the maker.
 
Legalese aside, McDonald's was sued and settled because a whole team of dipsticks on both sides agreed it would be much cheaper for them to write a quick check than to waste time disputing this sort of nonsense. Now every coffee in the country costs $.002 more to pay for the warning sticker saying "BE CAREFUL! it's hot."

Upon further review, I think your lawyer is either jerking your chain or doesn't know his elbow from a violin bow. It's a knife, of course it cuts things! Then again, I could be wrong... please don't sue me :rolleyes:
 
james terrio said:
Upon further review, I think your lawyer is either jerking your chain or doesn't know his elbow from a violin bow. It's a knife, of course it cuts things! Then again, I could be wrong... please don't sue me :rolleyes:
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Actually the example he used was a folder lock mechanism failure. I dont recall him mentioning the possible liability of someone poking themselves with a knife and then spilling hot coffee on their sack ...
 
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