Its my understanding that if the artwork is your creation then you have ownership of the artwork and therefore all the rights to it. This is from another site: "Understand that your artwork are automatically protected by copyright immediately after creation. However, artists should consider formally registering artwork with the U.S. Copyright Office, particularly if the work is to be duplicated commercially." I once formally registered a pice of my artwork. My memory tells me it cost $30. - Scotty

 

You may have to prove date of creation for the design. A quick and easy way is print a copy and mail it to yourself the postmark goes along way in a legal situation.

 

Once you create something it is copyrighted.

If you actually go through the copyright office you have a better chance of defending it in court.

If someone copies your stuff you must be prepared to defend your copyright vigorously either way. This means paying a lawyer to send cease and desist notices, and sue if necessary. If you designed something, and someone copied it, and you can't afford to sue them, you're out of luck.

The "poor mans copyright" or "mail it to yourself" is said to be completely useless, and does nothing to help you prove ownership.

 

Unless you are prepared to go to court then you can't do much more than send solicitors letters.
It isn't really worth the time, just get on with new designs. Let's be honest, a lot of designs are derivative.

 

To follow Dave's Post...you cannot prevent anyone from stealing...And even if they do....do you have the $$$ to file court action...remember the government will not get involved and the attorneys will not do pro bono or take the case on a contingency....Send the evil doer a letter and hope for the best...and just do another design

 

on my site I no longer have the right mouse click work and if you don't want your designs stolen I found never put them on ebay or a website. That makes them harder to sell.

 

If this would become a local infringement and the offender is not a megabucks company then it does not cost alot (and is downright fun if you are in the right) to go to small claims court. Sue their butt! Leave the lawyers in their well groomed offices and take what you need to prove your case to a judge. The idea of sending it in an envelope to yourself kinda sounds like a good idea but the 'evidence' could be faked, you know the old steam the envelope trick, so it might be useless. However, if sent in as certified, with the certified article number actually on the artwork, the envelope unopened, I think would stand up. Still unsure? Print it out and have it notarized; signature, date, and seal. - Scotty

 

The idea of sending it in an envelope to yourself kinda sounds like a good idea but the 'evidence' could be faked, you know the old steam the envelope trick, so it might be useless. However, if sent in as certified, with the certified article number actually on the artwork, the envelope unopened, I think would stand up. Still unsure? Print it out and have it notarized; signature, date, and seal. - Scotty

This would hold absolutely no value in the court of law.

 

Take the reciprocal outlook, if someone takes the time to duplicate the design it probably means it's very good and in high demand. ;o)

 

The sealed envelope is a myth...find me any documented where this was successfully used..

 

The minute you place your design on your website, it will be copied by someone in China, and sold back to your marketplace. I have seen this with my own eyes, and own designs. There is NOTHING you can do to protect yourself. Just move forward.

 

Never upload high res images onto your website. If they are too lazy to create their own design, surely they are too lazy to recreate yours.

 

keep your images low res,and if you can disable right click "save picture" features. spend more time selling then worrying about counterfiters, good luck to you uncletee

 

And it's very easy to get around the "right click disabled" deal. If you can see it on the screen, you can save it.

 

I find a photobucket account that posted around 30 of my images and even reversed them for easy printing to make transfers. What a jerk.
The images were only 275px wide at 72 dpi so you can't make anything big with them but there were for infant clothes so they got away with it. Then they posted a picture of all the onesies they made using my designs.
Now I use a watermark that says "copyright" through all of my designs online.

 

If you do find breaches of copyright then you can write to Photobucket/Zazzle/Ebay, they may take them down for you.
A watermark is good as it ruins the design, might as well put your site address across it.

 

Watermarks do not always ruin it and in some cases can be removed.

When I first got my cutter about 2 years ago a buddy wanted a shark for his car window. His sons' school is the SHARKS. I did a search for sharks and I am not sure were I got the photo but found one. I think it was one of the photo sites. It had the words across it for a watermark. Using a opensource program it traced the image and removed the watermark. I was extremely surprised that I was able to get it to trace it and output a usable image. I knew nothing about any of this at the time on tracing, eps files etc. And the opensource program runs from the command line etc. It shocked me that it did it.

I did not really know much about copyrights back then. Since mostly from reading here and DSSI I make sure that I am not given or use images like that.
But if a newbie, know nothing can stumble across something like that the chinesee or whoever it is looking to steal the art work and has skills and know how has a good chance.

Once I found out that about copyrights and wouldn't do the shark anymore, cuz he asked for a few more . a dad of one of the football players started making the window sticker. He used the same shark as the school tho. Not sure how he got that one.
So one gets smart another steps in to do the dirty deed.



Good Luck
Mark

 

Yes, I'm going to contact photobucket and get it taken down. I looked into their other pictures and captions and it looks to me like someone had a baby and they don't have a lot of money, so they made shirts themselves. I don't really care about that and if they never posted it, I never would have known. I definately don't want it up there though.
Of course there are ways around a watermark, nothing is perfect. But...it each thing you do to prevent copying cuts a lot of people off. If they really want it, they can still get it. I think my watemark is pretty good though. I don't think anyone will be using the images now.

 

If you can see it on the screen it is very easy to do a print screen and paste it to a document. Then Boom! copied 10 times over.