Same Characteristics applied to multiple products

Business version on Joomla 2.5

I have created a set of characteristics for a number of variants of a print, e.g. frame sizes, with description, weight, price etc. Is there any way to retain this data so that when I then apply the characteristics to a 2nd print I don't then have to re-enter all the informaion. I want a standard set of characteristics for all prints I have available - it is going to be tedious in the extreme to have to enter this information for each characteristic for each product.

No Response ?

I tried that, Copying a product with characteristics doesn't seem to work properly - For instance, I have a single product, a print, which has a characteristic with 4 options, if I copy that product, then in my category listing on my shop front I now show 5 products instead of 2 when there are only 2 products.

What about if you have already created a 100 products, and then later created a characteristic (let's say size). Is there a way to apply to the 100 products, because this is my situation?