Discussion:
I saw an idea for a home business for making an unusual type of story bracelet. You can buy into this business by becoming licensed by this particular company. In the product world I know there are lots of products on the market that are similar (consider beanie babies for instance) I would like to know if I could make a similar story bracelet on my own and start my own business selling them. Their bracelet has a visual copyright, and one of the beads in the bracelet is trademarked (which I wouldn't use of course).
Answer:
You can't patent or trademark ideas, but you can patent and trademark designs. It really depends on what they did, how you learned about it, and what you will be doing. This is very fact specific.