Protecting Your Dice Designs: Molds, NDAs and Trust

Every week a designer hesitates before pressing send on an email to us. Attached is the thing they've spent months on — a dragon relief, a numeral font, a colourway that took forty test pours to imagine — and they are about to hand it to a factory they found on the internet, in a country whose courts they will never enter. The fear is not paranoia; it's pattern recognition. This article is our attempt to answer it honestly: what actually protects a dice design, what's paper theatre, and how to tell a factory that guards your work from one that quietly resells it.

1. Why design anxiety is rational

The custom dice economics are brutally asymmetric. You spend months and real money developing a design; a bad actor can copy it from a single photo, skip your development cost entirely, and undercut your retail price the week after your launch. The tabletop community has watched this happen to campaign after campaign — successful Kickstarters cloned on marketplaces before fulfilment even finished.

It's worth being precise about where the risk actually lives, because it's usually not where buyers think. The overwhelming majority of knock-offs are copied from public photos after launch, by factories that never saw your files at all. Your manufacturing partner, by contrast, holds something more dangerous: the pre-launch files, the exact tooling, the colour recipes. That's why choosing that partner is the single largest IP decision you'll make — bigger than any registration, bigger than any contract. Everything below is about making that decision well.

2. Who owns your mold — and what "refunded" means

A full custom die begins with a steel mold, and the mold is where ownership questions get real. At our factory a new steel mold runs $600–$2,000 as a one-time cost depending on complexity, takes 20–25 days to cut, and — this is the clause to look for anywhere you shop — the cost is refunded as your reorder volume accumulates. Read that structure for what it says about incentives: the factory earns its tooling money back only by keeping you, not by reusing your steel for someone else.

Get three things in writing before the mold is cut. First, that the mold is exclusive to you: made from your design, used only for your orders. Second, what happens to it between runs — ours are archived, which is also why a reorder colour-matches a year later. Third, the refund mechanics, so the tooling investment converts into unit-price relief as you scale. A supplier who is vague on any of the three is reserving options you don't want them to have. (One aside for budget-conscious designers: hand-carved gemstone dice need no mold at all, so there's no tooling to own or protect — the design lives in the carving spec.)

3. NDAs that actually mean something

We'll be honest about non-disclosure agreements, because most articles aren't: enforcing an NDA across borders is slow and expensive, and you are unlikely to litigate over a DND dice set. So why bother? Because an NDA's real work is done before any breach could happen. A factory that signs one without friction is telling you it has a process for confidential work and expects to be held to it. A factory that stalls, deflects or "doesn't do that" is telling you confidentiality isn't part of its operating culture. We sign NDAs on request, before files change hands — and the request itself is a free diagnostic you should run on every supplier you talk to.

Keep the document itself simple and specific. It should cover the design files and 3D proofs, the colour and finish recipes, the existence of the project before your launch date, and any sales data you share; it should survive the quoting stage even if you don't order; and it should name a term of at least three to five years. A two-page agreement that everyone understands beats a twenty-page one nobody reads.

4. The never-resold rule

Here is the policy that matters more than any signature: client molds and designs are never resold. Ours is absolute — your tooling never produces anyone else's order, and your design never appears in our catalogue, our storefront or another client's quote. When a design you commissioned shows up in a factory's public listings, that isn't an accident; it's a business model, and plenty of low-end suppliers run on it.

A factory's catalogue tells you its ethics. If you can spot another studio's commissioned work for sale on a supplier's storefront, your work will be next.— Queenie, YSDICE project manager

So audit the catalogue. Browse the supplier's public listings before you share files and ask about anything that looks like branded client work: "Is this design yours to sell?" A clean answer distinguishes stock designs — which the factory owns and may sell to anyone — from commissioned ones, which it must not. And understand the honest boundary of every promise: a never-resold policy binds the factory that holds your files. It cannot stop a stranger cloning your launch photos — that's what section 5 is for.

5. Protect yourself before you press send

Whatever your factory promises, layer your own habits on top. They cost almost nothing and they compound.

6. Paper trails and payment rails

Protection isn't only contracts; it's the shape of the transaction. Pay the standard way — 50% deposit, balance before shipment — through channels that leave a record and offer recourse: T/T with a matching invoice, PayPal, or Alibaba Trade Assurance, which holds the platform between you and the supplier if the order goes wrong. Every payment tied to a written spec becomes another timestamped document proving what you commissioned and when.

The same logic applies to the production record. An a two-stage inspection — once at the workshop that made them, once again before dispatch — with a photo report doesn't just catch defects — it documents exactly what was produced for you, in what quantity, on what date. Together with your 3D proofs and approval emails, that's a complete chain of evidence: design, agreement, tooling, production, delivery. Designers rarely think of QC paperwork as IP protection, but if a dispute ever comes, the side with the organised paper trail wins.

7. Trust you can measure

In the end, no clause substitutes for a partner whose incentives point your way — so measure the incentives. A factory with nine years on one Alibaba storefront and a 4.9/5 rating across 459 reviews has a reputation asset worth far more than any single client's design; burning you would cost it the thing it spent a decade building. A 26% reorder rate means the business runs on clients coming back, and clients don't come back to a factory that leaked their files. Archived molds that colour-match a reorder a year later are a physical commitment to long relationships, not one-off extraction.

You can even test the culture before sharing anything sensitive: send a rough concept and see what happens. We return a free 3D design of every face within three days — and the way a factory handles that first small exchange, including how carefully it treats your half-formed idea, previews how it will treat your finished one.

8. What happens to your files inside the factory

Most articles about manufacturing IP stop at the contract and never follow the files through the door. Let's follow them. Behind the YSDICE storefront is Dongguan Yushun Hardware Co., Ltd., a registered manufacturer in Chang'an, Dongguan, and inside that building a client design moves along a deliberately short path. Your files land with one person — Queenie, the project manager you already correspond with — not a shared sales inbox. From her they go to the design desk that builds your 3D proof, and only after your written approval do production drawings reach the toolroom. The people polishing stock dice on the floor never see your artwork; the people cutting your steel see exactly one project at a time.

Physical storage follows the same logic. Archived molds sit racked under order codes, not client names, so a visitor walking the toolroom learns nothing from reading labels. Factory-floor photography — the kind every supplier uses for marketing — is taken on stock designs only; commissioned work appears in our public material solely with the client's written consent, which is why our catalogue photos repeat the same house designs rather than parading client launches. None of this is exotic security. It is housekeeping — but when you audit a supplier, ask them to describe this exact path, because a factory that cannot say who touches a file has never thought about the question.

9. The IP questions we hear every week, answered plainly

"Can I protect the shape of a die?" Not the polyhedron itself — a D20 is geometry, and geometry belongs to everyone. What you can protect is everything you added to it: the sculpted relief, the numeral font, the logo, the distinctive colourway as trade dress in some markets. Design your protectable layer deliberately, because that layer is your brand.

"Do I need to register anything in China?" For most indie studios, honestly, no — your enforcement battles will happen on the marketplaces where clones are sold, which respond to registrations in your market. Larger brands shipping serious volume sometimes add a Chinese design registration and customs recordal so copies can be stopped at the port of origin; that is a scale decision, not a starting requirement.

"Is it safer to split production across two factories so nobody has the whole design?" We see this logic often and it points backwards. Splitting a dice set doubles the number of buildings holding your files, doubles the audit work, and guarantees the two halves never colour-match. Concentration with a partner whose incentives you have verified beats fragmentation among partners you haven't.

"What happens to my mold if I stop ordering?" At YSDICE it stays archived — steel does not expire, and more than a quarter of our orders are reorders, some arriving after long silences. What you should confirm with any supplier is that dormancy does not quietly convert your exclusive tooling into their stock tooling. Get the answer in writing when the mold is cut, not when you come back.

"Can you copy this other brand's dice for me?" No — and you should want that no. A factory that will clone someone else's design for you is a factory that will clone yours for someone else. The refusal is the protection.

10. A protected launch, step by step

Here is how the layers assemble into a calendar, using the timelines our clients actually run. Week zero: you send a watermarked, flattened concept render and request the NDA; it is signed before anything else moves. Within three days you have a free 3D proof of every face and a firm quote. If the design is a keeper, production files change hands now — after terms, never before — and a physical sample follows in 3–10 days. While the sample travels, file your registrations at home: a US design patent application or EU registered Community design before any public campaign imagery, because launch photos are what cloners work from and some jurisdictions are unforgiving about disclosure before filing.

Steel is cut and production runs in the 20–25 day window, with mold exclusivity written on the invoice as a commercial term. Your inspection photo report lands before shipment — file it with your approval emails, because that report is also the dated production record in your evidence chain. Launch happens on your schedule, with your wordmark registration already in motion so marketplace takedowns have teeth from day one. Total added cost of the protection layer across that entire calendar: your registration fees and about an hour of administrative care. Total added time: usually zero, because every protective step runs parallel to a stage the production needed anyway.

11. Two cautionary tales and one good ending

The first tale walks into our inbox a few times a year. A designer quoting a project widely — reasonable — attaches full editable vector files to a first enquiry sent to a dozen factories — not reasonable. Months later a near-identical set surfaces on a marketplace before their launch, and there is no way to know which inbox leaked. Nothing in this story required a villainous manufacturing partner; it required eleven unnecessary copies of production-ready files. Staged disclosure exists precisely for this: a good render quotes just as accurately as a source file.

The second tale is about registration timing. A studio launched a striking set, watched a clone appear within six weeks, and filed marketplace complaints armed only with their own product photos. The claims stalled — "similar dice" is a hard argument without a registered right. Their next campaign, they filed a design registration and a wordmark first; the next clone came down in days. Same studio, same clones, different paperwork.

The good ending is quieter and happens constantly. A two-person studio commissioned a mold through us in their first year, sold through three runs, went silent for eighteen months while life happened, and came back to find their steel racked where it had been left and their colour recipe on file. The fourth run matched the first, the accumulated reorder volume had refunded their mold fee, and their design had spent the whole gap exactly where it belonged: in one building, on one rack, producing for one client. That outcome was not luck — it is what Dongguan Yushun Hardware Co., Ltd. has structured the YSDICE workflow to make ordinary, and it is the version of this industry that careful designers get to live in.

Layer your protections — then go build

No single instrument protects a dice design. What works is a stack: each layer cheap, each covering the gaps in the others. Here's the whole system at a glance.

Protection layer	What it protects	What it costs you
Factory choice & never-resold policy	Your files and tooling at the source	Due diligence time
NDA before file transfer	Pre-launch confidentiality	One request — free
Mold exclusivity in writing	Your tooling investment	A line on the invoice
Trade Assurance / documented payment	Your money and your evidence trail	Nothing extra
Design & trademark registration	Recourse against post-launch clones	Filing fees in your market

The designers who thrive in this industry aren't the ones who found a magic contract; they're the ones who picked a factory whose reputation was worth more than their design, papered the relationship properly, and registered enough rights at home to police the clones. Do those three things and the fear that hovers over the send button gets a lot smaller.