Copyrighted Logo - Parody

[ffokazak]

We print for a large skate brand, and they rip off something new each PO. I asked him about the legality and the cease and desist letters he must receive and he said he can wallpaper his warehouse with them. For every letter he receives he writes them back with the PO #'s, and reveals how many they actually produce and not once in 25 odd years has anyone ever taken any further action against them. Qty's are in the 500-2000 piece range. I think in most cases it will cost a corp more to legally strong arm someone than its actually worth, in these cases. If it were 100,000 pieces they may be getting a different letter...

He said "This industry was built on parody branding in the 90's" and its quite true as illustrated with Jason Lee!

[AAMike]

a recent sit down with our corporate lawyer revealed that parody of a logo can be done, however if your brand is a parody of another brand, it won't fly. The example given as a brand parody that was stopped below.

[royster13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt

[Wildcard]

Sometimes it's just too bad the big boys can't laugh it off, because that South Butt thing is really funny. A shirt label in South Africa (where I am originally from) was amazing at printing brand parodies and they were constantly fighting court cases while their tees became legendary.

The stock art issue does make sense that for small runs on tees you don't need the extended license but they don't actually have that provision in there so it feels like a minor gamble.