This thread is not about Cafepress, it's about the theme of my designs.
Okay, so I've had this idea for a t-shirt line for a little over a year and have been planning out the website and the best way to promote. I even considered Cafepress before I uploaded a design and purchased it and it looked as far as my standards "like crap."
Last night I was searching around and came across a Cafepress store with similar characters to mine by a person that I've never been in any contact with about my idea. I've only told a few people about this idea, so I guess 2 people just had the same idea which happens every now and then. The theme of our characters is very similar but there are many ways (design style, faces, colors, and names of the characters that make our designs different.
I don't want it to look like I'm copying her idea in any way. Should I scrap the whole idea that I've been working on for almost 2 years? Do I start my website and hope that there's no trouble? From the little I know about this person, I think she's just on cafepress as a hobby, so I know it's not a large company that could kill me in court. Still, I don't want to look like a copycat, even though this was an idea that I had that I thought was completely original.
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
Last edited by tim3560; June 2nd, 2008 at 02:02 PM.
When it comes to CafePress, it seems like there are so many designs that are similar, that I am not even sure how anybody would enforce some rules about copying. I think that if the theme is the same, but the take is different, then you should be safe.
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I have many hundreds of designs on CP. One was a celtic knot. Somehow this person found my one lonely design and she sent a letter to CP saying it was hers. Now how something as common as a celtic image can be one person's design I don't know, but it would have been far too much work to fight her on it. I had made it for a friend anyways, it wasn't really a design I was counting on for sales. I even went to her site and interestingly enough she has a tutorial on how to create your own knot. So if I used her tutorial to create this know wouldn't it be my own? I could not find that particular knot anywhere on her site either. This is a bit of a warning to you because CP will shut off your design and it will be up to you to convince them to turn it back on.
__________________ www.stuffnthingz.com - "You can never have too much stuff", however, "The best things in life aren't things" is also true. XPS1530 | DK20 | Mighty Press 15 |Chinese hat press | Oki5800 | 88+ | LP24
Stuff, so cafepress just took her word for it even though she didn't have the same design on her site? That's harsh. I'd definitely hate to put a whole site together and have cafe shut it down because someone else said I "copied" them.
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
Exactly! just be careful with CP, they are pretty "CUP" happy. On the flip side, I had my horse design stolen and I sent CP my drafts showing the distinct flip of the tail of my horse design and was glad that they turned off the infringing person's designs. What was funny in that case is that they had some cool designs of their own and why they felt they needed to steal mine I don't know...people are funny. Just be aware since you already see someone on CP with a similar design idea, people do check. One way around it is to fulfill your own apparel, but that is alot of work
__________________ www.stuffnthingz.com - "You can never have too much stuff", however, "The best things in life aren't things" is also true. XPS1530 | DK20 | Mighty Press 15 |Chinese hat press | Oki5800 | 88+ | LP24
A lot of work and a lot of money. Money that I really don't have for anything other than a sure bet. I don't know, it just sucks. I can't be mad at them though because there's no way that they found out anything about my idea. I don't know this woman from anyone else and I've only told a select few about this idea. I almost want to call her and see if she would be interested in a partnership, but then again, I don't know her at all.
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
This is a discussion about Similar theme for design but was not stolen. that was posted in the General T-Shirt Selling Discussion section of the forums.
Similar theme for design but was not stolen. 
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