What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
I like to get your own individual inputs. Copyrighting and trademarking just gives it legal protection and is costly to enforce individually. I expect any designed can be hacked, but I can do things to minimize it?
1. If selling online, would making the design picture smaller make it hard to copy and paste.
2. If I have a higher quality, more complicated design thus more costly to produce, would that help?
What else have you guys done to minumize your design from being copied?
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
In my opinion, you do what you can afford to do. However like canchi above, whether it's trademarking, copyrighting, or Poor Man's way of copyrighting your designs, it only acts as a deterent to keep the honest folks honest. The unethical folks, especially big companies that like to pick on little ones, will continue to copy / counterfeit to matter what because they can afford to do that (e.g. legal fees, payoffs, etc.). Sorry we can't be more of a help.
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
I've been thinking about this challenge as well.
Bad people will still copy for profit. But I think some ways to protect yourself is to publish your designs. What I mean is to have a blog and/or webpage that you announce your new design. Make sure people can "rss" it. And announce it in as many places you possibly can. My thinking is that I want to make it hard for whoever is stealing your design to publicize it without getting caught.
You can copyright your designs, even trademark them if you come up with a "life is good" design. But people will rip you off if they think you're making money with the design.
I think if you do get ripped off, you should make sure people know it as well. At least your designs were good enough to steal!
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
That's good point you brought up about publizing your designs. And do it as soon as you can. Having a website and emailing friends, relatives and / or business associates on a continual basis to showcase your latest designs wouldn't hurt. Just make sure to put the copyright symbol, your name / date on every single piece even though you may have not officially copyrighted via the USPTO.
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
Another thing you can do to protect from people simply cutting and pasting your design is use a water mark program and put a mark across the design. That way at least they would have to work harder at simply copying it and using it. Here is a link to a pretty cheap one that works well Script Software - Secure and Protect Your Digital Photos with iWatermark. Hope this helps. I myself keep telling myself I am going to start using a watermark but always forget
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
Quote:
Originally Posted by badtuna1
Just make sure to put the copyright symbol, your name / date on every single piece even though you may have not officially copyrighted via the USPTO.
Copyrights are handled by the US Copyright Office, not the USPTO. It is my understanding that putting the copyright symbol, name and dates is no longer relevant, as far as protecting your rights is concerned. However, it might serve as a good reminder/deterrent to potential thieves, so it's probably not a bad idea.
As for the original question, it depends largely on the type of designs you are dealing with. Some types of designs are more likely to get copied. Funny, offensive, popular culture type stuff being some of those categories.
I don't think using smaller graphics on the web is the answer. It's not worth giving up the potential marketing power of large images for a pretty poor insurance policy.
Along the same lines, watermarking may be a good idea, but in most of the stolen designs that I've seen people complain about, the image is re-drawn, so a watermark or smaller picture wouldn't matter.
I know people hate to hear it, but there's a good chance your designs are going to get copied. The best way to combat it is to run a superior business. Give people reasons, in addition to your designs, to buy from you -- excellent customer service, community involvement (the community of your target audience), top quality products, a good story, whatever...
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AustinJeff
I know people hate to hear it, but there's a good chance your designs are going to get copied. The best way to combat it is to run a superior business. Give people reasons, in addition to your designs, to buy from you -- excellent customer service, community involvement (the community of your target audience), top quality products, a good story, whatever...
I completely agree. And try to have enough going on that you're not dependent on that one design selling well and not getting ripped off. By the time designs are being ripped off, it's probably time to move on to the next thing anyway.
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AustinJeff
Copyrights are handled by the US Copyright Office, not the USPTO. It is my understanding that putting the copyright symbol, name and dates is no longer relevant, as far as protecting your rights is concerned. However, it might serve as a good reminder/deterrent to potential thieves, so it's probably not a bad idea.
If you want to get specific, you're right, but USPTO is just the website reference. The Copyright section is on the navigation menu. Also my reference to the copyright symbol is just that a "deterrent". Trust me, over the years I've been creating T-shirt designs and logos I had a couple of them stolen by Crazyshirts, Ron Jons, Kmart (yes Kmart) and Joe Boxer. However, most of my designs are officially copyrighted and our main company logo is TM.
For those of you who want to save cost on copyrighting your designs, you can create a catalog with a couple of designs (e.g., . 5 per page) and have them copyrighted all at one time for $30 fee that the copyright office charges.
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
Thanks guys for your detailed responses. I'm not there yet with this issue but I like to be prepared. From what I've read, I think it makes better sense to have my design be out there, to be looked at and shared. I think the important things are to focus on my design qualities and convey the concepts to my intended tarket market so that way they understand me, they know the benefits of my designs and that they value the authencity of my designs.. And last, to have a good amount of design ideas ready to market as soon as the current ones are exhausted.
(As Bill Gates said about bootlegging in China, if an OS is going to be hacked, I want it to be mine and not a competitor. It would be great if a big company did hacked my design and sold millions of it. Then it would be worth suing for royalities. Legit companies would rather settle than go to court. )
A few final thoughts;
Do we have like a patrol forums to notify members or let members publish when their design is hacked? If words get around that identifies the culprit, it should make it harder for them to continue their activity?
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
Quote:
Do we have like a patrol forums to notify members or let members publish when their design is hacked? If words get around that identifies the culprit, it should make it harder for them to continue their activity?
Not at T-ShirtForums.com. Not an area I want to get into (trying to be the judge to find out who really published the design first, whether they filed official copyright, falsely accusing people, legal issues, etc)
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodney
Not at T-ShirtForums.com. Not an area I want to get into (trying to be the judge to find out who really published the design first, whether they filed official copyright, falsely accusing people, legal issues, etc)
Rodney,
Did you ever publish an article about the best way to protect brand/slogan? I'd like to access that, if available. Thanks.
This is a discussion about What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited? that was posted in the General T-Shirt Selling Discussion section of the forums.
What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited? 
Re: What have you done to minimize your design from being counterfeited? 
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