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I am in the very early stages of putting together a graphics service, which may or may not be an actual "company," that being a seperate question. T-shirts are one of the avenues I'm going to take in getting my original designs out there.
My question is this; if I were to constantly and conspicuously utilize a "company" name (not my own name), say, at the bottom of a design, how much copyright protection would that afford THE NAME.
Let's say I want to call my service "Loopy Lou's Loony Designs", and I printed that at the bottom of all of my designs, and I put that name on my website, and generally sold designs under that title. Could someone come along and pay to TRADEMARK that name, and simply walk away with it because I hadn't trademarked it? Am I protected in any way by US copyright laws, since I'd already been using that name clearly and consistantly?
I'd go ahead and trademark my name, which I'm quite fond of (no, it's not Loopy Lou's) but it's money I don't have right now. At the same time I want to build that name to some degree, rather than using my own name. My goal is to sell printed clothes at first, then hopefully use that as a springboard for selling other printed things, and licensing custom designs, etc.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
My question is this; if I were to constantly and conspicuously utilize a "company" name (not my own name), say, at the bottom of a design, how much copyright protection would that afford THE NAME.
Let's say I want to call my service "Loopy Lou's Loony Designs", and I printed that at the bottom of all of my designs, and I put that name on my website, and generally sold designs under that title. Could someone come along and pay to TRADEMARK that name, and simply walk away with it because I hadn't trademarked it? Am I protected in any way by US copyright laws, since I'd already been using that name clearly and consistantly?
I'd go ahead and trademark my name, which I'm quite fond of (no, it's not Loopy Lou's) but it's money I don't have right now. At the same time I want to build that name to some degree, rather than using my own name. My goal is to sell printed clothes at first, then hopefully use that as a springboard for selling other printed things, and licensing custom designs, etc.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.