Valley firm faces complex world of patent protection: entrepreneur fighting to guard her invention.

Imitation, the saying goes, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Don't tell that to Sandy Stein.

The former flight attendant employs a "don't mess with me" attitude toward questionable business people pushing a product similar to one she invented several years ago and sells under the name Finders Key Purse.

While awaiting a patent on the hook portion used on the novelty key chains, Stein faces copycats entering the market and cutting into the profits earned by Alexx, Inc. the company she founded in 2004 and named for her father and son.

Her company's troubles illustrate how complicated the world of patents and intellectual property rights has become.

The copycats have a lot of chutzpah for so blatantly stealing someone else's idea but the same can be said for Stein, who isn't sitting back and letting consumers be confused by key chains made deliberately to look like a Finders Key Purse keychain.

"I can't afford to lose a business because someone knocks me off and I don't have the courage to go after them," said Stein, sitting in her office at Alexx, Inc., located in a Reseda strip mall.

On her cluttered desk, Stein holds two key chains: one is an authentic Finders Key Purse, the other ah identical copycat. Stein's version uses a purple color scheme on the cardboard backing. The fake version uses pink. The backing for both is the same size and shape. Both key chains use the same candy cane-like hook and spring-loaded clasp.

Stein expected the copycat key chains, which she began seeing about a year after she introduced Finders Key Purse.

Selling her product through hair and nail salons and small boutiques, the San Fernando Valley resident "cornered" the market before attracting the attention of the copycats marketing their key chains with names like My Key Finder and Island Key Finder.

When first shown a knockoff key chain, Stein said she was "furious." Lack of response from the copycat manufacturers to letters from her attorney made her all that more angry.

Confrontation

At one gift industry trade show in Atlanta this summer, Stein confronted a booth operator displaying key chains with the same parts and look as Finders Key Purse and when asked where be had gotten them they claimed to be the inventor.

Stein told the man she invented the key chains and to expect a letter from her attorney.

"It's funny how people take credit for inventing this thing," Stein said.

The number of imitators of Stein's keychain is high but copycats are typical in the area of consumer products such as jewelry or items sold through catalogues, said Brett Lovejoy, a San Francisco-based patent attorney.

Not pleased with the work of her first attorney, Stein hired Lovejoy for her fight against the copycats and speed up review of her patent applications.

While a utility patent remained pending before the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, Lovejoy filed an application for a design patent, which protects against unauthorized use of new, original, and ornamental designs for articles of manufacture.

The nine-page patent application for the hook portion of the key chain was necessary to describe what the device could look like and what materials can be used to make it.

"You want it covered in such a way that people can't add one tiny thing to it or change it one tiny way and say they are not infringing the patent," Lovejoy said.

Cease and desist letters go out under Lovejoy's signature to the copycats, which has turned out to be an effective way to get most of them to stop.

"For the ones who continue to ignore us we will consider suing them," Lovejoy said.

Only once, Stein said, was she contacted by one of her competitors, a businessman in Hawaii who suggested that perhaps the two of them could work out a distribution deal.

When she founded Alexx, Inc., Stein had no experience in running a business. Legal bills were expected but not to the extent that she has seen.

The cost, however, resulted in her attorneys tracking down all of the copycats and their manufacturing plants. A patent for Finders Key Purse was approved in China, which should cut down on the number of fakes produced there.

In the U.S., the federal Patent and Trademark Office granted a petition to speed up review of Stein's application after evidence was shown of the knockoffs.

Once her patent is approved, going after the copycats for infringement becomes yet another legal expense.

"As expensive as they are, it is a necessity of doing business," Stein said.

BY MARK R. MADLER

Staff Reporter