Arithian

I have been seeing a lot of t-shirt sites selling shirts that are clearly replicas (and they label them that way too) and am wondering if these arent copyrighted anymore, the companies just dont care, arent willing to prosecute, the printers of the shirts dont care, or maybe they authorized to print these.

Basically I have been seeing several sites selling like "vintage" type things like A-Team, Zelda, Superman, Atari/Nintendo games, Words/Phrases from popular movies, etc.

Now based on the number of sites I have seen these at I presume its not that they have permission to do it and that its one of the other reasons. Anyone have any idea?

 

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etctees

First of all, the most important thing to remember is that when you need a *Real* legal opinion, to go and get some real world legal advice Ie: If you were thinking of one of your own potential print designs and wondered if it breached copyright, that's the time to go see a lawyer

In the interim, there are a few different ways in which one can sell shirts with someone else's property on them. The first, and most prominent with the Nintendo themed shirts, is licenses. You see a lot of them these days, Super Mario Kart, Mario World, etc etc - those are licensed for use. Theres 80stees.com that sells quite a lot of these, and other such sites. There are huge companies that go and acquire the licenses for 100's of different images and then subcontract them out to printers, or sell them wholesale themselves. That's the reason you've always seen Batman/Superman shirts around.

Another way is to border on copyright but fly under the radar. Ie: Printing your own graphic accompanying copyrighted lyrics, band name, etc. and selling them to your friends, at markets, etc. I've done this (tee-hee!) on the low-scale of 20-30 shirts, selling them to friends all attending the same festival and wanting matching shirts.

Then you can go all out and breach copyright and stop only when you get a cease and desist letter. That guy that sold all those Dumbledore is Gay shirts a while back, that was pretty much his approach.

 

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Arithian

Ahhh ok, so licenses are purchased for these. I was wondering because so many sites have all this vintage stuff and it just appeared strange getting into this business knowing the one thing to avoid like the plague was anything that was copyrighted.

 

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Bougie

What about T-Shirt Hell? They use famous characters like Mario, pillsbury dough boy, and winnie the poo. I can't imagine that they would allow T-Shirt hell to show their characters smoking weed, dressed like hitler, and dressed like a pimp. Oh yeah they used sesame street characters also.

 

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etctees

And I'm sure they have some sort of legal advice with them at every stage Once again, if you want to do the same thing it is _very_ important to get your own. Most of the stuff T-Shirt Hell gets away with is (probably) covered under parody. You never see them printing a shirt that claims to be an official Sesame Street shirt, or even using the characters+title together, you just see characters that are obviously from Sesame Street doing things that they normally wouldn't do, for the sake of a joke. It's the same reason the Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park can get away with parodying characters invented by other people, and how Harvey Birdman gets away with parodying Hannah/Barbera characters.

 

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markthenewguy

yeah you can get away with a lot of stuff if it is a parody. check with a lawyer though to make sure

 

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surfdefender

Quote: Originally Posted by etctees and how Harvey Birdman gets away with parodying Hannah/Barbera characters.

In this case, I believe Turner broadcasting/time warner owns both Cartoon Network and Hannah-Barbera.

 

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