Cafe Press / Zazzle infringements

[ZooCity]

Has anyone with a pre-print line here dealt with this?  We see an nearly constant set of products that directly infringe on one of our federal word and also on a logo mark.  Very blatant copies of our product. 

My question is- can you successfully cease and desist Cafe Press or Zazzle, etc. directly or are they somehow able to sidestep this and you have to get on every user that infringes? 

Seems to me that Cafe Press, etc. are the sellers and they are the infringers, I don't care who they are enabling to do it or are involved in as part of that process.  But I know the law often differs wildly from my common sense approach to things like this.  It would probably be cost prohibitive to cease & desist every single jackhole on those sites doing this. 

[Sbrem]

Well, printers are supposed to know if they're using copyrighted materials with permission. I don't think they can claim ignorance even if it's true. Of course, are your pockets deep enough to try to follow through?

Steve

[blue moon]

my thinking is that if they can not be liable for what's going on, there has to be a release of some sort on file before they can print customer provided art. The problem ends up being who was the customer that infringed? If you can't give them the name they might not be able to provide you with the release.
In the end, how do you even know it was not the local competition doing it rather than online guys?

pierre

p.s. if it was costing us money, I would seriously look into it! You might be the first one to be awarded millions of dollars in fees.That would be AWESOME!!!

[Screened Gear]

Start small with it. Write a letter to Cafe press and let them know the issue. List your website page and the page that your design has been "copied". Tell them you will take legal action if its not taken care of. They can't police the website for every design but if they are told about something and no action is taken then you may have something to fight. Good luck.

[ZooCity]

I know these guys have dealt with this before so no, probably don't have the pocket depth to handle it. 

And Pierre, that is the pipe dream of all pipe dreams- getting paid out from a TM infringement!  It's nearly impossible to recover money, even just for legal fees, from even the most blatant of infringers unless you can prove malicious intent or some term like that which is pretty hard to do.  But, yes, how rad would that be to actually get paid back what someone stole from you in sales?  If we had a system setup to be punitive in this way, you'd see a lot less infringement out there. 

My IP lawyer is a bad ass and I'm sure we would win any case that actually made it into litigation but her goal is to keep us out of court as the cost is astronomical. 

Screened- all this stuff goes straight to aforementioned lawyer.  I try not to get too involved as I might slip up.  The only times I'm allowed to personally bring something up is if it's borderline and very local and I don't want to be a jerk and just send a scary cease & desist to them.  Everyone else gets the scary cease and desist which includes a request for all sales records of the infringing product.  It's worked well so far but costs $300-600 to do it, depending on how much of an a-hole the other party wants to be about it. 

[ebscreen]

I would tend to think that having probably been slapped with millions of cease and desists these
companies likely pull the page/product/design pretty quick.

Anybody can design anything on there, doesn't mean they're selling it, and doesn't mean CP etc.
are making any money off it.

[Dottonedan]

I just opened a shop on zazzle, cafe press, and a few others. each had it's own (we are not held responsible) disclaimer. Basically, you complain and they take it down and review.


The end result might be like they did with a friend of mine. He had a unique one of a kind item that was authentically (licensed) product and was selling on etsy.


Some other chick started making the same thing but in a more crude manor but was not licensed. He didn't go after her, (she went after him) and complained to etsy saying he stole her idea and he is a big company that is mass manufacturing them. She was not sued, but rather kicked out of participating on etsy. At the same time, even tho his was a licensed product, he was banned as well. Seems to be that simplest way of handling it was pulling a (Pontius Pilate[/b][/size][/font][/color]) and washing their hands of it without going through legal.

[brandon]

One of our clients successfully sued another business in town that stole his design that he trademarked, patented, all that. He forced them to ditch their product and sell his design/shirts and he takes most of the profit. And he sells a lot, a lot of that design. Bought us our first auto. It did take a long time (a little over a year) so get ready for some serious paperwork and some serious loss of time. I was just surprised our client never talked to the other print shop or did anything against them. Being a fellow printer I never brought anything up!

[broadway]

I had to contact Cafe Press and a few other sites concerning some of my TM designs getting ripped off. First thing, email them a form letter and include all your copyright, TM numbers... In my instance once they new of the situation everything was removed. Also send everything to the person/store that is profiting from it. If you saw it on Cafe Press, chances are it is also on Ebay or similar sites. It all comes down to how much time, money you want to spend on protecting your product.