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tmagee · August 16th, 2007

There is a company who wants to purchase some of my designs to use for their companies t-shirts that they will be selling. He has offered to purchase some of my designs that I have already created and just slap their company name on them. He has offered to only pay $200 per design (which is very low in my book). I dont mind selling him these designs for that cost but do not want him to own full rights to these designs.

I am not too thrilled about the cost, but could use the extra money at this time so im debating it.

If I sell him these designs, should I sell him certain rights such as non-exclusive rights in case i want to tweek these a little differently and sell them through a different company or from myself one day? Each design will have his company name on them so I could take his name off and change some minor things up to make it look a bit different.

I also dont want him to buy these designs and end up liking them so much he brands his company off of them or something along that nature. I dont mind if he uses for t-shirts only, but do not want them altered by anyone or someone else taking those designs and using them for their own use or slapping their names on them.

If anyone has some info on the best way to go about this, please let me know.

thanks!!

Rodney · August 16th, 2007

Just write up a contract with the limits you want to place on the licensing of the image.

Make sure that it notes that you aren't selling him full rights to the design, that you are just licensing the use of the design for X purpose or X number of prints.

tmagee · August 16th, 2007

thanks Rodney.

appreciate the help.

hostingdiva · August 16th, 2007

Rodney's right - just write up a contract with what you want.

By default, you're the copyright owner so he couldn't do anything with the images unless you tell him it's okay, however, write up a contract to be safe.

Also, while you may need the money - don't push over to easy. $200 bucks is really cheap for original work that, once its out there, you won't be able to get back.