customer provided art with possible copyright issues

[GAC05]

Carefully document everything with email and if it looks like the Feds are closing in - execute plan B:
https://www.bleachbit.org/


wayne k
guam usa

 

[Andy D]

Take for example an order I just finished for some golf tournament sponsor signs, should I have spent hours contacting all 24 companies to make sure the golf tournament had their permission to use their logos?

I used that very same analogy a couple months back... Just because the local Wal-Mart Manager donated to a charity,
does he have the authority to approve me putting the Wal-mart logo on a sponsor sign? Who knows, and there's a hundred other logos
on there with that one. There's too many other things to worry about... and 999 times out of a 1000, if anyone notices and actually cares
about one sign..They will send a cease and desist letter, and that will be the end of it.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Carefully document everything with email and if it looks like the Feds are closing in - execute plan B:
https://www.bleachbit.org/


wayne k
guam usa

Hey now, don't knock Bleachbit, it keeps my Linux rigs nice and clean.

 

[Z SIGNS]

Not exactly an accurate analogy. Most on here aren't selling inputs, but a finished good.

That being the case if I ever get sued for lettering Hectors Landscaping trailer with a nabbed google image of a lawnmower...that he gave me.
I'll just play Sargent Schultz "I know Nothing"
I'll just pass the lawsuit onto to my suppliers.After all they provided the ink and the vinyl.

If the the sign guy,t-shirt guy,business card card, guy and all others are all getting sued
I think an alliance should be formed.They could all share the expense of a lawyer to defend themselves.

But back to original post

You should always be concerned about anything that could put your reputation in harms way.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I'll just pass the lawsuit onto to my suppliers.After all they provided the ink and the vinyl.

Also, don't forget to go after the software companies as well as they made it possible to replicate goods illegally that much easier.

But that's not what I'm saying. If you rip off a design, you chose to use those materials to rip off the design. They didn't sell those materials with the mind for you to use them to rip off someone's design. Significant difference.

However, there was a lawsuit along those lines. They didn't win, but there was a lawsuit. Anybody remember betamax? Suit was brought up against those makers of betamax as it was used to copy movies off the tv, so people wouldn't have to buy the commercial copies. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios (1984)

They didn't win against the makers, but the point is, case was brought up against them.

This is where "contributory infringement" comes into play. Also known as "secondary infringement".

That is what we would be judged on. For people that aren't the direct culprits.


I'm not saying that the odds are high, I'm just saying how I see it (in my non-legal mind of course).

 

[signbrad]

I think these are good questions to bring up.

If someone brings you an image, how do you know whether it's pirated or properly licensed? How far are you required to pursue the matter to find out? Do you ask for a sales receipt? Other than asking, how would you know? And how would you know if they were being truthful?
If someone brings me a sheet of MDO and wants it painted, how do I know it's not stolen? Do I require their proof of purchase from the lumberyard? If someone brings me a truck to letter do I ask to see the registration to make sure it's not a stolen vehicle? It these things similar? Or not?

Are we required to police our clients?

Of course, sometimes it's obvious that something is not kosher. A client may bring you a piece of clipart or a photo that is low rez and has an istockphoto watermark on it. It seems obvious that it is protected by copyright and they have not paid for a license. I simply ask the client if they will be buying the image themselves or do they want us to buy it and add it to the cost of the job. All photographs are protected by copyright from the moment they are created in 'fixed' form (this is US law) unless the copyright has expired and the photo has passed into the public domain. But even though all photos are protected, how do we know a client has not licensed a picture? Are we required by law to demand proof? Clipart is usually protected by copyright, too, owned and licensed by a clipart service. If someone brings us clipart, how do we know they do not have permission to use it? It's true that we can do an online search for an image, but that doesn't necessarily prove that our client has not licensed it, does it?

Regarding logos, many logos (if not most) are not eligible for copyright protection anyway because they don't meet the standards for it. A logo may be protected by trademark law, though, if it identifies the goods or services of a business. What if a hardware store asks me to put the logo of a chainsaw maker on their sign, and it's one of their suppliers? Am I required to make them prove they have permission? If they have it put on the sign and they weren't supposed to, what then? Is it like a criminal offense where someone needs to be fined or sentenced for committing the crime? No. What usually happens is the hardware store will get a letter from the chainsaw maker instructing them to remove the logo from the sign (this has happened to some of our clients). Why would the chainsaw company initiate an expensive lawsuit? The goal is to stop the infringement, not "bring criminals to justice."

Many of you do banners for events that may have many sponsors, and the event organizer wants you to put the logos of the sponsors on the banner (and they want the banner next week). To try to get permission from 20 or 30 corporate home offices to use trademarks is an impossible task, and if you do it I hope you're charging for your time. Instead, if the organizer gives me a bank logo because the bank is one of the sponsors, I assume the logo file came from the bank and it's okay to use. What is the worst case scenario if a logo is used when it shouldn't have been? The sponsor will simply ask that it be removed. This would seem to be a silly request, though, because would that not defeat the purpose of being a sponsor? (Again, this is not a copyright issue. It's a trademark question).

Now, here is another scenario. But this time things are different. A local entrepreneur asks you to print 5000 T-shirts that he is going to sell, and he wants an NFL logo put on them. He tells you he does not have permission to use the logo yet, but to go ahead and make the shirts. "Besides," he says, "it's free advertising for the team." This could be 'contributory infringement.' When you knowingly assist in an infringement it's similar to driving the getaway car in a bank robbery. You are held just as liable because you knew what was going on. Contributory infringement usually requires prior knowledge of the infringement.
An infringement lawsuit in this case might have as its goal more than just stopping the infringement. If there is a significant revenue realized by the shirt sales, the NFL may feel it worth recovering the shirt money as lost income, and there may be fines and penalties and attorney's fees tacked on that could be worth as much as the shirts (I'm speculating now).
I have heard, though that trademark infringement cases that involve counterfeit goods, like fake Rolex watches, can have penalties in the millions of dollars.

Brad in Kansas City

.................

Do you want to know how to become a licensed NFL vendor?
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/become-licensed-nfl-vendor-21221.html

Here are the prequalification terms from the NFL website. The NFL takes this very seriously.
https://www.nfl.info/nflconsprod/welcome/cpprequalify.htm

 

[OldPaint]

i had signs 365 do both of these..........asked them about how they handle copy written work.
they will print it....its THE OWNER/CLIENT/PERSON REQUESTING THE DESIGN.....that gets the brunt of legal consequences ...........as for the flying eyeball i know who held the copywrite.......as for the rat fink.....well, i been drawing them for years..........

 

[S'N'S]

i had signs 365 do both of these..........asked them about how they handle copy written work.
they will print it....its THE OWNER/CLIENT/PERSON REQUESTING THE DESIGN.....that gets the brunt of legal consequences ...........as for the flying eyeball i know who held the copywrite.......as for the rat fink.....well, i been drawing them for years..........

Ratfink's copyright is owned by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth..... http://www.ratfink.com/rat-fink-licensing.php

 

[ams]

This one can be hard to tackle. If you say you want proof it's theirs, they may go somewhere else instead of digging up proof. If you don't say anything you run the risk of a lawsuit.
Best advice I would say is something along these lines.

"Due to limited resources and staffing we cannot determine copyright authenticity. Upon placing an order, you agree that you own or have permission to any and all copyrighted materials provided to us"

 

[Gino]

Let's go one further. Let's suppose you print/duplicate this artwork, and it looks awful as far as composition, elements and/or whatever. Many of you same people here, are the same ones that say..... if they proof it, it's their call and their responsibility. So, when the real owner of the artwork comes to you (or their lawyers) complaining about the poor quality, whose fault is that, if you told them of their mistakes and you printed it anyway ??

Or.........​

The real owner of the artwork, doesn't want to have your client be associated with their product or artwork ??

If someone misrepresented themsleves, you think a signed piece of paper or their say-so will stand up in a court of law ??

You didn't get it from the horses mouth, so you just take the easy way out and say....... Okay, I'll print it for you. Take the money and come on here, bragging about the money ya just made on some nutjob.

Policing your clients or checking up on things for them is not your problem. However, accepting the project, just made it your problem. They either supply you with written authorization....... or you tell them to go somewhere else. No time wasted. No fuss, no muss.

People, don't sound so hard up. Find some integrity in your own business.

Ya wanna print this sh!t, go ahead, but let it be known, technically you're in the wrong.

 

[Gino]

This one can be hard to tackle. If you say you want proof it's theirs, they may go somewhere else instead of digging up proof. If you don't say anything you run the risk of a lawsuit.
Best advice I would say is something along these lines.

"Due to limited resources and staffing we cannot determine copyright authenticity. Upon placing an order, you agree that you own or have permission to any and all copyrighted materials provided to us"

:ROFLMAO: is that what Frankenstein said when they brought him a brain, heart and other stuff to make a life-sized doll.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Now, here is another scenario. But this time things are different. A local entrepreneur asks you to print 5000 T-shirts that he is going to sell, and he wants an NFL logo put on them. He tells you he does not have permission to use the logo yet, but to go ahead and make the shirts. "Besides," he says, "it's free advertising for the team." This could be 'contributory infringement.' When you knowingly assist in an infringement it's similar to driving the getaway car in a bank robbery. You are held just as liable because you knew what was going on. Contributory infringement usually requires prior knowledge of the infringement.
An infringement lawsuit in this case might have as its goal more than just stopping the infringement. If there is a significant revenue realized by the shirt sales, the NFL may feel it worth recovering the shirt money as lost income, and there may be fines and penalties and attorney's fees tacked on that could be worth as much as the shirts (I'm speculating now).
I have heard, though that trademark infringement cases that involve counterfeit goods, like fake Rolex watches, can have penalties in the millions of dollars.

B

What about "Willful Blindness"?

“[t]o be willfully blind, a person must suspect wrongdoing and deliberately and failed to investigate"

"[W]here indeed it may be enough that the defendant should have known of the direct
infringement, as it is in the law generally.... One who, knowingly, or strongly suspecting that he is involved in shady dealings, take steps to make sure that he does not acquire full or exact knowledge of the nature and extent of those dealings is held to have a criminal intent, because a deliberate effort to avoid guilty knowledge is all that the law requires to establish a guilty state of mind."

 

[visual800]

some of yall must have taken the bar and failed it. Things in life are not this complex.

If a customer brings me art and I recognize that it is from a friend in the sign biz I contact my friend and let them know their customer is passing their art around, if I do not recognize it, I dont care where it came from, not my problem.

I am not here to investigate, I know nothing can be done to me for reproducing this as long as I have emails regarding this art, end of story.

IF in fact, you are contacted by an attorney for reproducing art given to you by your client tell that attorney to bite your a$$ and back off

 

[royster13]

I am not here to investigate, I know nothing can be done to me for reproducing this as long as I have emails regarding this art, end of story.

You can and will be named in a lawsuit if the "aggrieved" decides to pursue damages....And if damages are awarded they are usually on a "jointly and severally liable" basis....So if you have "deeper pockets" than your client they may get damages from you first...If you have a "hold harmless" agreement with your client you may have to sue your client to recover your costs....And all along you will incur legal costs to defend yourself and/or recover from your client....Good luck with just telling the aggrieved party's lawyer to "take a hike"....

 

[OldPaint]

sign broker got me in the middle of this one.........brings me art work I KNOW IS COPYWRITTEN. i told him it was he said its ok ........to use....well i got workin on it and couldnt find the font anywhere. so i called easy rider..oppps))) now i opened a can a worms........they want to know who i was and who i was doin the work for and was told to CEASE & DESIST.........and they would not come after me. well i completed it, got paid.......dont care what happened to whoever it was he was working for......and i havent done any work for him ...since)))))
the font looked like this, at the time this was not available & the logo.

 

[signbrad]

What about "Willful Blindness"?

“[t]o be willfully blind, a person must suspect wrongdoing and deliberately and failed to investigate"

"[W]here indeed it may be enough that the defendant should have known of the direct
infringement, as it is in the law generally.... One who, knowingly, or strongly suspecting that he is involved in shady dealings, take steps to make sure that he does not acquire full or exact knowledge of the nature and extent of those dealings is held to have a criminal intent, because a deliberate effort to avoid guilty knowledge is all that the law requires to establish a guilty state of mind."​

WildWest,

This a good point.
Though 'willful blindness' is not something written into copyright law, it is a thing. It has been established by federal court decisions, not just in copyright infringement cases, but in trademark infringement cases as well.

Willful Blindness

Here is an example involving trademark:
A small shop owner buys handbags from an itinerant operating out of the back of a van. The bags have the Gucci logo on them. The bags are cheap enough that the shop owner can sell them for 37.50 apiece and make a nice profit. Is this 'willful blindness' on the part of the shop owner?
Anybody who has been in the bag and baggage business for any length of time knows the name Gucci. It's world famous. It's common knowledge that the bags are not cheap. If the shop owner sees that these bags are of poor workmanship and they have purple vinyl linings, he should suspect they are counterfeit. He should be held liable for penalties even though he may claim he did not know they were not genuine. He could have at least asked the traveling peddler if the bags were genuine. And how much effort would it take to make a couple of phone calls to investigate beyond that (for example, calling a Gucci distributor to ask about the purple linings). And does it make sense that Gucci would be distributing through traveling peddlers?
The standard penalty for this kind of infringement is the equal of triple the profits from the sale of the goods plus attorney fees and court costs. A judge may decide to impose more.

.............

How do you know it it's pirated?

When it comes to artwork, sometimes it's easy to find out if it has been pirated. If it still has the watermark on it, for example. This is a red flag. If a customer has actually licensed a photo or piece of clipart, they should be able to give you a high rez bitmap or a clean vector.

If there is no obvious watermark, I like to simply ask where they got the image. Sometimes I ask what the cost was. Many say they got it off the internet, in which case it's probably junk anyway. I offer to buy them an image that I know will be good quality and that I won't have to fight with to make it useful. I tell them that sometimes it costs more to fix an unacceptable image than it does to just buy a clean one.

I generally don't insinuate to a client that they are dishonest and I avoid insulting them. It's not my style anyway.
If they give me a file that does not have any signs of being pirated (maybe they give me two or three file formats, which is a good sign), I simply use it. This is regarding clipart or photographs, both of which are protected by copyright law.

A logo is not in the same category as clipart or a photo. Generally, most simple logos do not qualify for copyright protection. Some elaborate logos do. But I've been doing signs since 1974 and I don't recall ever using a logo that had copyright protection. Maybe I did and didn't realize it. I know specifically of three logos where the companies applied to the US Copyright Office for copyright registration for the logos and were denied (Geek Squad, Subway Sandwiches and Best Western Motels).
But if a logo represents a product or service, it is certainly protected by trademark.

If a business brings me their logo to put on their sign, I don't question it. If they are a franchise outlet of a national chain, I still don't question it, though I will often ask for branding guidelines and offer to call their home office for them to get the guidelines to save them the legwork. This is a practical step, as it heads off the problem of using a trademark incorrectly.
I assume that a person that is affiliated with a company has authority to order a sign with the company logo on it.

What if the sign client is not really affiliated with the logo owner? An event organizer wanting a banner with all the logos of the sponsors, for example? I just do it. The organizer usually provides me the logos even if some are crappy. In 40 years I have yet had this turn into a problem.
Sometimes, though rarely, a retailer has not been permitted to use a logo of one of their suppliers on sign work. A hardware store, for example, not being allowed to use a DeWalt logo on their wall. Or a siding company not allowed to use the Alcoa logo in any of their advertising. In rare instances, I have seen a manufacturer instruct a retailer to remove a logo from the retailer's sign, even though the retailer was a seller of the manufacturer's products.
More often, I have seen clients get in trouble for not using logos correctly (placing them too close to other logos, using incorrect proportions or colors, etc).

What if some guy off the street wants a Harley logo on their garage at home. It is surely a trademark infringement. What if my doctor wants OP to paint the Tazmanian Devil cartoon character on the transom of his Bayliner. This is no doubt a copyright infringement, though I've never seen anybody busted for it.
These things are pretty obvious.

Our company's experience with trademark infringement

In the ten years I have worked for my current company, we have been "involved" in trademark infringement three times. In each case, the logo that the client brought to us turned out to be an infringement of an existing trademark. In all three cases, we were never contacted by the trademark owners or their lawyers. No one was sued. Cease-and-desist letters were sent to the sign clients and they had to get new signs. We made the new signs for all the clients. In all three instances, it was obvious that the trademark owners were not trying to punish anybody. They were just protecting their trademarks. Their goal was to stop the infringement.

I know one case where ReMax Real Estate sued another realty company for using signs that looked like ReMax signs. It went to court and the infringement was found to be intentional. A document turned up that was a sign shop work order with the client's instructions to use Remax red and Remax blue on the signs. The sign shop did not get in trouble, but ReMax won the case against the other realtor. ReMax is known to be aggressive in defending their trademarks.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I assume that a person that is affiliated with a company has authority to order a sign with the company logo on it.

Not necessarily. It depends on the guidelines and if there are other deals in place with other vendors. Some go elsewhere to get things cheaper, even though they know they aren't supposed to.

Last time I checked there are only 4 places that have the license to do John Deere embroidery from corporate. Now granted it's been 7-8 yrs since I last checked.

Harley I think has it stated on their PDFs on their website that all requests for outside work has to be approved by corporate (though Harley I'm sure is a totally different animal).


Now for me, I did some work for a few state workers that were in the Hwy Department. They wanted one specific logo. I asked for the requirements for the logo usage, I get a call and I'm told to use this other logo and to give them my email address so they can send me a PDF file.

Now while, there wasn't specifically a problem with permission as to rather something could or couldn't be done, there was a problem with the logo that they were wanting to use and have an outside vendor re-create it that wasn't one of their regular vendors.

 

[AF]

Ethics come into play regardless of whether or not the copyright issue is of concern. I do know one thing for certain, if there were to be a civil suit then everyone and their uncle will be named and will have to go through depositions at the very least to get out of the suit.

 

[decalman]

Paranoia will destroya.


I just use common sense and am weary of the obvious, like for instance copying a logo like Harley Davidson for instance. They will freak out on you. I am weary of even saying it....Harley D. shh shh

 

[Andy D]

Ethics come into play regardless of whether or not the copyright issue is of concern. I do know one thing for certain, if there were to be a civil suit then everyone and their uncle will be named and will have to go through depositions at the very least to get out of the suit.

What if a customer not only emailed you a design with some vague unlicenced art, but they also:
1 Designed it using a program that was torrented.
2 Used fonts borrowed from a friend.
3 Stole their neighbors WIFI to email it to you.
????
Man, you would be in a world of hurt if you printed that.
You would probably go straight to hell too.