is it illegal to design a shirt (your OWN design) and sell them if its designed after a band? ?
say i design something on adobe illustrator after the foo fighters, its my own design and i want to sell the shirt. is that legal?
no it isnt a copied design and it would just be my own design with the name of foo fighters on it
The "sell it" part of your question would clearly put your project on the wrong side of the copyright protection laws.
Lets take a similar example and change it by degrees:
If you design your own Foo Fighters tee shirt and wore it as your own piece of "fan art," you would be fine, as this would fall under the copyright laws "fair use" doctrine. You are using the band name on your original design shirt as a form of homage. You could even go so far as to make an EXACT copy of one of their existing designs, and you could wear it.
Take it one step further. Lets say you and a half dozen friends are all going to a Foo Fighters concert and you want to make six copies of your tee shirt design. As long as you aren’t selling the shirts to your friends, you should still be fine, under copyright and trademark laws. (still personal use)
One more step farther: Lets say, you own a tee shirt printing business, and you decide to print out a few hundered of your custom designed Foo Fighter shirts and brought them to a concert, to give them away, FOR FREE, as a way to promote your shirt printing business. This effort crosses the line of legal vs. illegal as your distribution of the shirt, with a trademarked name is still for commercial purposes, even though you are not making a dime, in fact, you would be losing money on distributing these free shirts. The point here is that you are attempting to, eventually, make money on this promotion by encouraging future business. Without the band’s permission to use their name, you could face a lawsuit.
So, even if you sold, EVEN ONE, single shirt, no matter who created the design, you would run afoul of copyright and trademark laws and face a possible lawsuit if you got caught.
http://www.copyright.gov.
September 26th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Yes. Foo Fighters is a recognized trademark of "Foo Fighters" You would first have to secure permission from their management to begin production and distribution of your shirt.
References :
September 26th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
by "after the foo fighters" do you mean it says foo fighters or it just looks similar to a foo fighters t-shirt. the name foo fighters is trademark and if you use it then its copy right infringement. if its just looks similar with no image are piece of a previous designed item use then your fine.
References :
September 26th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
It will be illegal by using Foo Fighters name on the shirt because it is copyrighted, trademarked, etc… by the Foo Fighters band itself. You can’t sell someone’s logo, name, trademark, etc… without their given permission and acknowledging that they know you are using it to gain profits. If you want to use trademarks, names, logos, you’ll probably have to pay a royalty fee and it involves a lot of legality and lawyers. Just don’t do it, make one for yourself and wear it and forget about trying to sell it.
References :
September 26th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
The "sell it" part of your question would clearly put your project on the wrong side of the copyright protection laws.
Lets take a similar example and change it by degrees:
If you design your own Foo Fighters tee shirt and wore it as your own piece of "fan art," you would be fine, as this would fall under the copyright laws "fair use" doctrine. You are using the band name on your original design shirt as a form of homage. You could even go so far as to make an EXACT copy of one of their existing designs, and you could wear it.
Take it one step further. Lets say you and a half dozen friends are all going to a Foo Fighters concert and you want to make six copies of your tee shirt design. As long as you aren’t selling the shirts to your friends, you should still be fine, under copyright and trademark laws. (still personal use)
One more step farther: Lets say, you own a tee shirt printing business, and you decide to print out a few hundered of your custom designed Foo Fighter shirts and brought them to a concert, to give them away, FOR FREE, as a way to promote your shirt printing business. This effort crosses the line of legal vs. illegal as your distribution of the shirt, with a trademarked name is still for commercial purposes, even though you are not making a dime, in fact, you would be losing money on distributing these free shirts. The point here is that you are attempting to, eventually, make money on this promotion by encouraging future business. Without the band’s permission to use their name, you could face a lawsuit.
So, even if you sold, EVEN ONE, single shirt, no matter who created the design, you would run afoul of copyright and trademark laws and face a possible lawsuit if you got caught.
http://www.copyright.gov.
References :
Designer, Illustrator and Desktop Publisher for over 30 years