Legal stuff to protect owners & business

[BlingGraphicDesign]

I am curious if there is any simple legal stuff that we need to have on hand to protect ourselves (owners) and the business against customers, like for example, a job gone wrong or the client prefers bringing their own shirts to have a design done on it?? If there's any other legal information we need to know, please let us know. Thanks.

 

[WhiskeyDreamer]

I don't apply graphics to supplied materials unless it's something unique and then I inform the customer of the possible problems.

As for supplied garments, any customer supplying garments has to sign a portion of our work order that states we cannot be held accountable for machine errors (like a hoop popping on the embroidery machine) and the garment will be given to the customer with an "I'm sorry" and a refund on the cost to decorate the garment. Any setup fees incurred will not be refunded.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

As for supplied garments, any customer supplying garments has to sign a portion of our work order that states we cannot be held accountable for machine errors (like a hoop popping on the embroidery machine) and the garment will be given to the customer with an "I'm sorry" and a refund on the cost to decorate the garment. Any setup fees incurred will not be refunded.

+1 on that. Although I add other stipulations as well if they didn't get the pattern work done through me and they try to bring in garments ranging from all different kinds of fabrics.

Although, I've never had a hoop pop off, but I've actually had a file get corrupted in the middle of a stitch out, even when it had worked fine the 30 previous stitch outs..

I usually try to ask for overage as well.

 

[SignProPlus-Chip]

Liability Insurance for starters.

Some boiler plate hold harmless agreements can't hurt. You need to have a document like this that explains the things that can go wrong, what you will and will not be accountable for, an have them sign it for you to keep on file.

 

[ScottB]

The two happiest days of my life, the day we bought the embroidery machine, and the day we sold the machine!

We got burned by a "former" customer. They had a logo that was drawn on a piece of paper. We had to scan it and clean it up before digitizing it for the machine. They wanted a .jpg of the logo so they could put it on their desktops. We complied with 72 dpi files. In the middle of the run, they want us to stop production since they found someone else who will do it cheaper. They did pay for what we had finished, and wanted the digitized file as well as the vectorized file for their new company. I told them that the digitized file was of our property since it was a file we developed and had put numerous hours into it's cleanup.

Long story short, I had a disclaimer on my estimates that stated that all edited or developed artwork was property of the company. Purchase of the artwork would be negotiable at the beginning of the job. I quoted the price of the artwork $10,000 just to deter them. They got the finished product, the original paper artwork, and the 72 dpi files. They're new embroiderer charged them twice as much as I did to digitize the artwork. Where's the savings.

It's important to have some type of disclaimer to protect the hours one can spend working on artwork. Especially for folks who develop the stuff fresh out of their imagination! I recommend you find a good friend who happens to be a lawyer.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

We got burned by a "former" customer. They had a logo that was drawn on a piece of paper. We had to scan it and clean it up before digitizing it for the machine. They wanted a .jpg of the logo so they could put it on their desktops. We complied with 72 dpi files. In the middle of the run, they want us to stop production since they found someone else who will do it cheaper. They did pay for what we had finished, and wanted the digitized file as well as the vectorized file for their new company. I told them that the digitized file was of our property since it was a file we developed and had put numerous hours into it's cleanup.

I already charge for the embroidery file (DST, PES, VIP etc), so if they want me to send it to them that's one thing. Those files are along the lines of JPGs in reality. Can only size them so much up or down, especially when you are talking about a design that has a lot of manual stitches on it.

Now if you are talking about the EMB versions (think AI/CDR files here) then that is something else and those I will not send out, no matter the price. I love that file extension. It makes embroidery files a right click away from being true vector eps files. That's another reason why I don't send those out. If I have to trace a file that is actually going to end up as a vector file and not used for embroidery, I'll still use the embroidery tools because it easily converts to eps vectors.