Perfect Toaster Co., Delaware C-corp, clean cap table (founders + TechShop sponsorship warrant). Product liability insurance quoted, binds at first commercial sale. Kickstarter terms reviewed. Deposits refundable until ship confirmation per the kill-case commitment in Financials.

No blocking art found for the lever mechanism or the element-swap hatch. The search covered US and EP grants in the toaster and small-appliance classes and was run once, in May, before the v3 geometry changed. It has not been re-run against the current design.

One party worth naming. Dualit holds long-standing patents on element construction; ours differs in cartridge format rather than in principle, which is the kind of distinction that survives a search and not necessarily a letter. This is not currently a ledger entry and should be.

Co-designing in public is the moat and the unresolved legal position at the same time. Sketch directions, the two-slot decision and the colorway poll all carry community input, and no participant has signed anything. The likely reality is that none of it is separately protectable and none of it is contested. The risk is not litigation, it is a single participant claiming authorship publicly during the campaign.

Cheapest resolution: contribution terms in the community guidelines, applied going forward rather than retroactively. Weeks of work, and it should happen before the campaign rather than after a claim.