"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
We print files as they come in we have no restrictions on that.
One can't be expected to know what every trademarked image is.
Trademarks for words or phrases have bitten me in the ass a couple of time. The last one was just yesterday. Now, this is for wholesale heat transfers for a another company I do work for but it relates. My heat transfer design is all type "Country Girl PMS. Pass My Shotgun" with varying fonts, colors and effects. We received a C&D yesterday because the phase "Country Girl" is trademarked.The last one was "This Guy Needs A Beer" with cartoon thumbs up hands. The words "This Guy" is trademarked, if you can believe that.The standard procedure for these kinds of violations is first a C&D, don't comply and you get sued.I am far from a lawyer but I would think that intent would play a roll in all of this and in many cases, including mine, ignorance is valid. Comply with the C&D and your good... in most cases.Printing a one off is not a huge deal IMO. Printing and reselling a known registered trademark for potentially large $$ is a whole different matter.We sell to a lot of flea market guys... they could careless. I have one that wants the Browning deer head logo and another the Under Armour logo... ain't happen on my watch LOL
Quote from: 1964GN on September 03, 2014, 06:08:06 AMTrademarks for words or phrases have bitten me in the ass a couple of time. The last one was just yesterday. Now, this is for wholesale heat transfers for a another company I do work for but it relates. My heat transfer design is all type "Country Girl PMS. Pass My Shotgun" with varying fonts, colors and effects. We received a C&D yesterday because the phase "Country Girl" is trademarked.The last one was "This Guy Needs A Beer" with cartoon thumbs up hands. The words "This Guy" is trademarked, if you can believe that.The standard procedure for these kinds of violations is first a C&D, don't comply and you get sued.I am far from a lawyer but I would think that intent would play a roll in all of this and in many cases, including mine, ignorance is valid. Comply with the C&D and your good... in most cases.Printing a one off is not a huge deal IMO. Printing and reselling a known registered trademark for potentially large $$ is a whole different matter.We sell to a lot of flea market guys... they could careless. I have one that wants the Browning deer head logo and another the Under Armour logo... ain't happen on my watch LOLI am really surprised that those phrases could be trademarked. I am pretty sure there is something in copyright law about generic-ness or something like that can invalidate a trademark if challenged. Of course the trademark would have to be challenged and that would be quite a bother and also IANAL sooo…After looking for this guy™, I found out that the hands are part of the trademark, so not as generic as it might seem. Though LML investments really covered their butts on the incredibly generic country girl.Also in my search I found out about a dude who trademarked the symbol for pi with a period after it and is now trying to C&D all designs with the pi symbol in them, period or not due to "similarity". http://www.wired.com/2014/05/pi-takedown/ I read somewhere that he has trademarked i <3, but I can't find it on the trademark search.