T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
If you have an idea for a t-shirt, how do you find out if it has already been done before and if you don't find it, do you have to have it copyrighted in order to sell in a store? Or do you just do the design?
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
Tricky issue. A fruitless search is no guarantee of a negative result. Any artistic expression is copyrighted the moment it is put in a tangible form. Still, it is advisable to register your creation with the copyright office. There's nothing to copyright or register, however, before you actually did the design.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
It's extremely hard to know if designs have been done before. The best thing to do is probably to run a few Google searches, and if you don't find anything go ahead. It's certainly not something you need to particularly worry about, but a cursory look doesn't hurt.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
I've seen alot of my prints out there...they just changed it some and made it thiers. Without putting abunch of money into it there is nothing that can be done, just have to do a better job of printing than they do to keep the sells. Most likely it is the same for them if you accidently print something like thiers.
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Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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Originally Posted by Solmu
It's extremely hard to know if designs have been done before. The best thing to do is probably to run a few Google searches, and if you don't find anything go ahead. It's certainly not something you need to particularly worry about, but a cursory look doesn't hurt.
See...I just don't understand this mentality. Why wouldn't you worry that you are stealing another's work, even if you are not blatantly doing it?
I would say that MORE than a cursory look would be more respectful to those who may have an idea that you "think" is your own idea up for sale ahead of you. Do EXTENSIVE google searches. Search the phrase in as many ways possible. If your idea is "Irish I Was Drunk", search using as many possible combos as possible to make sure someone else isn't already selling a shirt like that.
Irish I was drunk shirt
Irish drunk shirt
"Irish I was drunk"
"Irish I was"
etc
I would think if you find a site or company selling that shirt or you find that it is a famous phrase in some other way, that any self-respecting person and someone who is respectful of others and their creative work, would refrain from doing a "copy" or "stealing" the slogan/design. It's no-brainer stuff.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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would think if you find a site or company selling that shirt or you find that it is a famous phrase in some other way, that any self-respecting person and someone who is respectful of others and their creative work, would refrain from doing a "copy" or "stealing" the slogan/design. It's no-brainer stuff.
One would think yet this is not the case and probably never will be.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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Originally Posted by tbaby
Why wouldn't you worry that you are stealing another's work, even if you are not blatantly doing it?
I don't worry about stealing other people's work for the simple reason that I don't "steal" other people's work, and I mostly give other people the benefit of the doubt for doing the same.
"Stealing" their work would require that I'd actually seen it - it's pretty hard to "steal" someone else's work if you came up with an idea yourself. Sure there's subconscious plagiarism, but more likely you both just had the same idea.
I think doing a quick search to see if your idea has already been done to the point where you shouldn't bother is a good idea, but if you came up with an idea yourself I don't think there's any reason to exhaust yourself looking to see who (if anyone) has done the same thing before.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
I think there is a big difference between creating an original design and finding later that it is similar to a half dozen other designs or blatantly stealing a design.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
"that any self-respecting person and someone who is respectful of others"
You may have too much faith in people who are in it to make money.
There really is NO way of policing this. A phrase can be "stolen", especially if it hasn't been demonstrated as an integral part of the sale of the product...which, I think, is the only way you can trademark a phrase. For instance, I believe "got milk" is trademarked. meaning, if you put it on a shirt to sell, yer prolly gonna get sued.
Other funny phrases are completely fine to "steal". Unless of course you are "stealing" the phrase WITH the design (font, placement, graphic, etc.) and duplicate it exactly as you see it...or so it is justified.
It's not an exact science and there are grey areas dealing with this. You are right though, no one should steal these things. But then again, you can't really trademark them either.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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Originally Posted by Solmu
"Stealing" their work would require that I'd actually seen it - it's pretty hard to "steal" someone else's work if you came up with an idea yourself.
If you don't take the proper time to look extensively to see if the idea is out there already (regardless of whether you "think" it's original), then yes...it is stealing, IMO.
You made the point that you should do a "cursory" look, which I just think is pretty shady. Why not do an "extensive" look to really be sure that what you are doing is original?
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Other funny phrases are completely fine to "steal".
Why would anyone want to make money from something that isn't their own, creative, original idea? I just don't get some people. Unbelievable.
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I think there is a big difference between creating an original design and finding later that it is similar to a half dozen other designs or blatantly stealing a design.
Doing an extensive search BEFORE "creating" a supposed "original" design, would save you the time, no?
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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Why would anyone want to make money from something that isn't their own, creative, original idea? I just don't get some people. Unbelievable.
Again, people who are in it to simply make money aren't the most honest anyway. It may behoove you to grasp this fact before getting into the business. If you have good designs, they will invariably be stolen at some point.
You can take this as a slap in the face and get all mad about it and spend time and money prosecuting, OR you can take it as "mimicry is the highest form of flattery", accept that your design was good enough to steal and spend time and money promoting your design and thinking of others.
Like David and Lewis said though, you have to actually see it to steal it. If you came up with it totally on your own, it's not stealing. I'd say it's near impossible to come up with something exactly the way someone else did. Cuz there is the phrase and then there's how you lay that phrase out on the shirt (font, colors, placement, graphic).
This isn't to say you SHOULDN'T research your design or idea. It's good to know what's out there. But I dont think EXTENSIVE research is necessary unless you want something completely new and original.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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Originally Posted by tbaby
Do EXTENSIVE google searches. Search the phrase in as many ways possible. If your idea is "Irish I Was Drunk", search using as many possible combos as possible to make sure someone else isn't already selling a shirt like that.
Irish I was drunk shirt
Irish drunk shirt
"Irish I was drunk"
"Irish I was"
etc
I would think if you find a site or company selling that shirt or you find that it is a famous phrase in some other way, that any self-respecting person and someone who is respectful of others and their creative work, would refrain from doing a "copy" or "stealing" the slogan/design. It's no-brainer stuff.
I would hardly call doing google searches extensive research. Not considering that google hasn't indexed every page on the web and proper text and keywords would need to be present on the page, you have to take into account there are thousands of t-shirt manufacturers without a web presence.
I'd have to agree with Solmu on this. Since in most cases a popular phrase cannot be copyrighted or trademarked except the actual design art and is essentially an idea. If you've never seen it, how could you steal it? If you are going to copy someone's exact design that is one thing but if you create an original design incorporating a popular phrase that's quite another thing. It would be like saying a dictionary would be stealing by publishing a definition of a word which has become part of our culture. After all, they didn't create it and everyone that uses it in conversation also did not.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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If you don't take the proper time to look extensively to see if the idea is out there already (regardless of whether you "think" it's original), then yes...it is stealing, IMO.
You made the point that you should do a "cursory" look, which I just think is pretty shady. Why not do an "extensive" look to really be sure that what you are doing is original?
I think you are confusing deliberately taking someone else's design and accidentally coming up with the same design as someone else.
The first in intentional and done when a person should know better, the second is something that probably happens everyday to even the most honest of people.
Saying that it's "shady" because a person used the word cursory instead of "extensive" seems to be blowing things out of proportion.
He already stated that he doesn't steal designs or advocate it, it doesn't make sense to call that shady.
Doesn't matter if you do 10 or 1000 google searches, it's still possible that you could come up with the same original, creative idea as someone else. As others have mentioned, Google doesn't index everything, and some designs aren't sold online, but may be registered as copyrights, sold in stores, been created years before. Happens all the time.
You can only do so much before you have to put your designs out there. It's entirely possible that people will create designs that they thought were 100% original, did the extensive research, only to find out that someone else has already done it.
I think the key is what happens after the person realizes that there is a copyright on an image that they thought was original. After it's shown which design came first, then if the person does the right thing, that's the important part.
Painting everyone with the same "everyone's out to steal designs" brush doesn't seem fair.
Re: T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before
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Originally Posted by tbaby
If you don't take the proper time to look extensively to see if the idea is out there already (regardless of whether you "think" it's original), then yes...it is stealing, IMO.
That's absolutely crazy. Just because someone gets an idea to market first doesn't mean they have a monopoly on that idea. If someone comes up with the same idea independently, it's more likely that neither party has a particularly "original" idea... but that's no reason both parties can't create it and sell it.
I think your paranoia just makes you see infringement everywhere. Theft requires that you take something from someone else. Creating something that is coincidentally similar without seeing or hearing of the other version is not theft, that's just... silly.
This is a discussion about T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before that was posted in the General T-Shirt Selling Discussion section of the forums.
T-Shirt Idea - How to Know if it has been Done before 
