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legal or illegal

2050 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  knox harrington, 
K
Let's play legal vs. illegal!

Case 1) You purchase a dress at full retail from Forever21. You embellish it with your own screen print, remove their tag, place yours, everything needed on label is there, etc. Legal or illegal?

Case 2) You purchase a dress at full retail from Forever21. You DON'T MODIFY IT AT ALL but you still remove their tag, place yours, and then sell it for more than you paid for it.

I think Case 1 would be perfectly legal -- it's what I do all of the time with American Apparel blanks I screen print. The second case seems questionable since there is no modification, just a label swap.. basically passing something you paid retail for off as your own and marking it up.

What say you random masses?!
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splathead
1. Legal. you are describing what the majority of apparel decorators do now.

2. also legal. Once you buy something, it's yours. You can do whatever you want with it.

I think I read here somewhere that AA requires you to decorate their apparel before resale. But technically, placing your own label on it is re-decorating?
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P
I was going to ask a similar question! Would that be the same as buying a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and then putting your labels on the shirt? I understand that when you buy something it's yours. When you buy music, you can not re-use the music as you see fit! I know some companies sell their items for you to put designs and stuff on. If a company doesn't want you to do this,even after you purchase it, can you get in trouble for it?
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Rodney
You may also want to check with actual lawyers to see which of the above is legal or illegal.

Even though some of the above is legal, it's possible you could still get sued and have to spend time/money defending your right to do it. If money/time is an issue, you may want to include in your research if it's worth it to work in gray areas like that where you have big names with big lawyers that can and do sue.
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K
thanks for the feedback friends.. any others care to weigh in?
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