I found this neat seller on Amazon that makes customized facemasks (you just upload whatever photo you want.) If I were to use a photo of a corporate logo like Microsoft, Boeing, Apple, TSMC or Tesla, would I be violating trademark law? I wouldn’t be selling to anyone, just wearing for personal use, or gifting to family/friends.
You wouldn’t be violating law by using them, but the vendor certainly would be by selling them.
Nobody’s going to go after you but the vendor may refuse the order.
IANAL. This sounds right but I wonder if the vendor would be held harmless because they are just fulfilling a custom order. Do they have a duty to determine if an order includes a registered trademark that is not owned by the customer? What effort must they make to ensure this?
When media service shops were more plentiful they would refuse to copy a copyrighted VHS tape, for example, but they’re holding a copy of a Star Wars tape in their hands and it’s pretty obvious. For an online custom order I’ll bet the order can be fulfilled without a human ever seeing the logo until they pack the item for shipping.
I think the answer is yes, but this is also why companies generally send cease and desist letters rather than immediately jumping to lawsuits.
Kind of like you YouTube will host just about anything so long as they don’t receive a takedown request.
Once a company receives an official “hey, you’re violating our trademark” letter they can no longer claim ignorance.
Total WAG on my part though.
A few years ago, an artist friend of mine drew a custom piece of art for me, for one of my characters in a Star Wars role-playing game; the artwork featured a drawing of a bantha, and some text in Aurebesh (the “alphabet” that’s used in Star Wars films).
I used CafePress to print up some stickers of that artwork; when I tried to order another set of stickers of the same art, a few months later, CafePress refused the order, stating that they had found that it violated copyright.
Walmart would for example refuse to print some photos if they suspected they were copyright. (Typically things that looked like wedding or other professional photos.) Someone I know tried to get a hat embroidered with their nickname (“Kool” like the cigarette brand) at a booth in Disneyworld. They refused to do a word that was a trademark, even if the typeface would not be the same.
In both these cases, the company was big. It was my observation back when the company I worked for was trying to limit people from using software they had not paid for - “If you pirate software, and are you sued, the software company won’t even recover lawyer fees. If you do something that costs your company millions of dollars, and they have the money to pay that - seems like a career limiting move.”
Walmart specifically had been the target of a class action suit by pro photographers, I understand. A company big enough to have commercial sticker printers probably has enough money to make themselves a target for a lawsuit. Sellers on Etsy who make (and sell) an item or two a week may be too small for the rights holder to bother going after, beyond a simple cease and desist letter.
AFAIK, IANAL you can do whatever you want for yourself. Where it becomes a violation is when it is used commercially or publicly in some way that reduces or cheapens the market for the original.
You could for example do artwork with copyright characters. If you sell it, you are violating copyright. If you exhibit it in some way to promote some activity, you are benefiting and so violating. Disney has been known to go after Day Care centers with home-made painting of their characters on the wall. The existence of these paintings in some small part promotes the business which charges money, so involves commerce without permission.
Note that when Napster came along, and then assorted music and video and other internet sharing sites - the law does not require the distributor to even be making money or any benefit to be violating the law by distributing copyright material.
(My favourite copyright story is about how someone was sued - they had taken the North Face logo of curved lines, and rotated it 180 degrees. The changed the wording from “North Face” to “South Butt” using the same typeface. Despite this being obviously parody, they lost the court case. So just because you think you are right, doesn’t mean a bunch of rich lawyers cannot convince a judge otherwise)
Just my opinion but it looks like they crossed the line from parody to confusing competitor by selling the same kind of clothing and gear as North Face.
Maybe if they had stuck with t-shirts, bumper stickers, zipperpulls, etc, they might have prevailed.
They also apparently tried to trademark their “parody” … My preview of the wikipedia article cuts off halfway through this sentence: “The North Face sent a cease and desist letter to Winkelmann threatening to sue him if he did not “cease all promotion and sales of South Butt products and abandon his trademark registration application.””
We tried to order a customized Friends or Monk (or something) cell phone case for one of my kids and the vendor said “It looks like you’re using copyrighted material” and canceled the order.
So, as others said, you can try but the vendor would be violating copyright by selling it to you.
I worked at the print department at OfficeMax and were told to tell customers “We can’t copy that for you, but you’re free to use our self-serve machines.” We had one customer who would make copies of DVD covers and when he had trouble with the self-serve machine and asked for help, I’d purposely turn my head and pretend I didn’t see what he was copying.
The same was true for adult material. We would refuse to make the copy, but point them towards the self-serve machines.
Yes, I know ignorance isn’t a defense, but I did what I was told, as did everyone working there.
There are at least four different kinds of intellectual property law, and all work differently. What’s being discussed here is trademark, not copyright. Basically, a trademark is something that a company uses in doing business that identifies the company or its products, and there are laws about it so companies can protect their good names.
For instance, take those daycares decorated with Disney characters. There’s one near here (that I assume the megacorp hasn’t yet heard about) called the Magic Kingdom, with all of the writing in a font similar to Disney’s, and covered with Disney characters (and no cartoon characters from any other company). Clearly, the owner of that daycare wants to be thought of as “the Disney daycare”, because Disney has, through great effort and expense, built up a reputation for being family-friendly and wholesome and other such things that a business might want to appear as. That was effort and expense that Disney expended, not this little daycare, and it’s unfair that they should be able to profit from it.
And suppose it goes further: Suppose that this daycare (which Disney has no actual connection to) gets involved in some sort of scandal, like getting the lowest possible rating from the city agency that rates daycares (which, in fact, it has). Does Disney want people going around saying “That Disney daycare is really low-quality; they only got 1 out of 5 stars”? What if, hypothetically, there were an even worse scandal, and people were saying “Did you hear about the child abuse at that Disney daycare?”?
That’s why Disney has trademarks, and why the law protects those trademarks.
One of my favorite t-shirts was a Gibson guitar t-shirt that showed all the different models surrounding the globe with the caption “American Made, World Played”. After many years of wear it was in ready for the rag bin, so I tried to find a replacement with absolutely no luck (I even contacted Gibson).
So I took some photos of the shirt hoping to get a one-off custom one made. No luck there either, all the places I tried had strict policies against copying anything with an official image or logo. I can understand, but I was really disappointed at the time.
I had a guy airbrush copies of a Yardbirds* and Cream (Wheels of Fire) album covers on a t-shirt at an expo… At first he wasn’t going to do it, but agree to because it was arguably a derivative work and it showcased his talent. He gave me a good price since we were exhibitors at the show and he was able to work on it at his leisure.
*Ironically, I think the album was a bootleg with a rare pic with both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck
I proudly wore those shirts until they fell apart and got a number of compliments on them.
A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a "derivative work
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. I suppose the sharpest part of the line is whether the copier or the persons involved in producing the copy are somehow making money off it. A home-made Halloween or Sci-Fi Convention costume for personal use, probably not a violation. Used in advertising or promoting something, or implying that the owner of the rights supports or condones the copy or its use, probably crossing the line. A person paid to make a copy, violation.
Quite often the examples discussed in this thread will escape scrutiny because they are too small or out of the public eye and not worth the holder’s while. But… there is the risk (I have read) that a trademark holder can lose their rights if they fail to defend their right - so in that respect being overly picky in defending their rights has a benefit. Hence someone like Rolls Royce or Disney will seem to be the heavy. (Or ASCAP going after Girl Guide camp fire singalongs)
As for OfficeMax, “willful blindness” only works as a defense until it doesn’t.
I tried to get some art I bought on Etsy printed on cardstock at OfficeMax last year. It was presumably unique art of Alice in Wonderland characters - not the Disney version, not the original book’s version, but something vaguely Alice-themed. They wouldn’t do it, I had to come print it myself. I think OfficeMax is scared of even the idea of Alice in Wonderland maybe being Disney?
Conversely, I’ve bought a phone case off Redbubble and off Etsy with real cartoon characters, from Cartoon Network/Adult Swim and nobody batted an eye.
I always erred on the side of caution. I don’t know about OfficeMax, but I was told that Kinkos had secret shoppers and making a mistake meant immediate termination.
Edit: I checked your link and the work is obviously professional and I’d refuse to print it. If you insisted it was yours, I’d have you complete a form in which you state it’s yours.
I had a regular customer that would draw classic cars. I kept his form on file.
Massive Magazine has a familiar logo.
So do you mean it’s professional in that the Etsy creator stole it from some actual copywritten source (which doesn’t seem to be a problem for Etsy) or you mean you can tell that a professional artist made it who is probably not me?
If it’s the former I can see where the printer would be hesitant. If it’s the latter it puts Etsy buyers in a pickle because all I purchased was the art for the express purpose of printing! In the end it worked out because I could print it myself at OfficeMax but not on the paper I wanted, and it took me like a half hour and some extra cash to get the dang things right.
I’m surprised Etsy doesn’t A) Check harder for copyright and B) Advise/demand that artists selling art for the purpose of downloading & printing include some sort of notice for printers that it’s alllowed.
The Etsy art linked above seems to be essentially a license to print. There are many businesses out there that license copyright artwork and photographs. Typically you pay for some defined use. That might be use of a photograph in a magazine or web site, single or multiple uses, all the way up to purchasing the rights in their entirety.
Normally you purchase a non-exclusive right to use for a nominated purpose.
Those Etsy artworks explicitly say “printable” so one assumes the purchase is for some limited number of prints for private use. Commercial use of the artwork, say selling something with the artwork, would be another matter. Probably negotiated for a higher price if there wasn’t already a set fee.
A commercial copying or printing company should be fine doing the work so long as they were comfortable that the work had been appropriately licensed.
Commonly the license to use requires that attribution of the work appear on the reproduced work.
I would go with the latter. The customer who drew cars showed me his hard copy portfolio with works in progress. Again it’s a judgement call and we were instructed to err on the side of caution.
There are artwork books for teachers that that have a notice on the pages that it was okay to use for educational purposes only. Some customers would ask that we zoom in or white out the notice, but we wouldn’t do that.
Edit: I didn’t ask for a Teacher’s ID, but some of my co-workers did. Again, judgement call.
Edit 2: At least where I worked, you could buy any paper or cardstock we had by the sheet. Some of our stock didn’t have a cost in the pricebook, so I’d just estimate a price less the cost of the print. The only time we’d stop a customer using their own stock in the self service machines was when they were printing labels since inkjet labels could come apart in the copier.