This is why you NEVER agree to do trademarked artwork...

[Humble PM]

When you have intellectual property ™© ®, you gotta protect it.

1. The way the laws are here, any and all potential infringements have to be pursued, otherwise the company runs the risk of losing the protection.

2. Companies spend tons of money protecting their IP. While it may not seem of any importance to "you", doesn't mean that there arent ramifications that could be huge.

3. Downside is that most everything is gone after and who has the deeper pockets, even if they dont have a leg to stand on?

4. I would also speculate that it would be shared as well. The odds of that in this day and age are pretty good. Too many share too much as it is on the internet. As if the internet is the modern day journal.

1. They'll chase after any infringement
2. They got lawyers, who love to bill, and if they win, you Lose.
3.They got lawyers, who love to bill, and if they win, you Lose.
4. They're gonna show their new toy to the world, and WorldWW will allow 1. to run 2. and 3.

 

[ikarasu]

Back in the day doing stuff like this was considered free advertising, and companies loved it.

You could do hand made / fan art, replicate most things to the dot.... And the companies saw it as good publicity.

I've always wanted to buy a van and wrap it like the Scooby Doo mystery van... Think it'd be a fun project that pays homage to a show I watched as a kid. It'd be free advertising for Scooby Doo, and bring nothing but good publicity.... But of course it isn't allowed.

I'm still on the bandwagon that copyright should be changed so that if you're not financially harming a company, copyright law shouldnt be enforceable. Hopefully one day it changes and things are more reasonable!

 

[netsol]

Wow, how do you know all this about the guy ?? Anyway, I didn't do it and neither did the OP, so this useless baggage means nothing.

Like I said earlier, unless I know the person really well, I ain't doing it.

I have to say, the fact that you know people really well isNOT a guarantee they will not start a sh*tstorm.

 

[Johnny Best]

The Internet has made it a LOT easier for companies to go after people or small businesses who infringe on their trademarks and other IP. Automated scripts can be run to sniff through image search engines, social media, etc. Some infringing work will appear very easily in a manual Google image search. All a company has to do is run a "vanity search" on its own logo and scroll through whatever appears. It doesn't take long to find stuff that isn't legal.

It's usually fun (in a dark comedy sort of way) to see a local business end up learning the hard way about trademark infringement. I've been in the sign industry long enough to see it happen a few times, especially in recent years. We refuse to do the work, give warnings, but they get their stuff done by someone else the way they want it done. After a little while, maybe months or even a couple years, they get busted. The old "I told you so" thing comes up. The same thing goes for companies who could legitimately use a major company's trademark but deliberately chose not to follow the company's brand guidelines (those are really RULES, not suggestions). Just this week I designed an recruiting office sign where someone clearly put together their own non-compliant fanboy art. I did a version using the proper trademarks, colors, etc. They insisted on their BS version instead. I'll be laughing my ass off when they get forced to replace those sign faces.

In the past a small business could often get away with various kinds of trademark infringement. After all, who's going to notice? Technology now makes it so much easier and more efficient for the stuff to get noticed, no matter how small the po-dunk town may be where the infringing is taking place.

Bobby, there is a german word for that feeling, Schadenfreude.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Bobby, did you want to be a lawyer when you were a kid?

If one wants to be a professional in a trade, it would be best to atleast have a passing knowledge of what laws may be applicable to your trade. As it goes "ignorance of the law is not an excuse".

It amazes me how many, even on here, have such language in their contracts like "emergency repair" when they are really talking about repos and in their jurisdiction they actually have to explicitly say repossession in order to have that production to fall back on (this is just another example, no one mentioned it, just giving another example). At least if want to stay within the law. If one doesn't care, one doesn't care.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I'm still on the bandwagon that copyright should be changed so that if you're not financially harming a company, copyright law shouldnt be enforceable. Hopefully one day it changes and things are more reasonable!

Problem here is that financially harming isn't just as clear cut as a monetary transaction has occurred and the IP owning company didn't get any part of it. That is what most people assume that "harming" is, when it isn't, that's just the easiest one for people to wrap their head around.

The other problem that we have is that most people have a hard time wrapping around ownership in the "digital" age. Now granted, in this day and age, the laws need to be reformed, they certainly favor bigger companies that own IP, not the smaller individual, but that's what happens when lobbying groups are the way that they are.

I'm not one that believes that IP should expire just because they have been around for xx amount of years with the possible proviso that they are still being used as they are consistently. In other words, lets say one has a set of comic characters (all live in the same universe), created and owned by one generation and now we are two generations down and it's still being used (every day or month depending on release cadence), that's one thing, but if someone hasn't used the IP in years and ownership fixing to be expired if they don't put something out, that's another thing. Had that happen with a movie franchise that hasn't been used in years, going to revert back to the original owners and boom a new movie and thus the contract is extended (and I think we are talking about in terms of decades since the last one before the ownership changed back to the original creators).

One thing that I never understood though is if one is in the creative field, why would "you" care if/when someone else's IP expires? Certainly if "you" are worth "your" salt, should be able to come up with "your" own.

 

[AndersHerp]

We have a customer that just had his account frozen by Warhammer 40k. He wanted their logo as a wall sign, and I knew we needed someone high-ups permission to use the logo. We couldn't ever get anyone to respond back to phone calls or emails, and told the customer we hadn't got a hold of anyone for clearance. He said fine, then told us to put the sign up anyway. Then he received a cease and desist letter, but he still hasn't had us take down the sign. The only reason I am bummed about it, is because I recreated the vector image from a JPEG lol.

 

[Stacey K]

The guy told me he does or did drive for Acme. The logistics director never heard of him. He also come in a few weeks ago and dropped off another truck for another local company, to which I said no. It could all be legit and he's just putting them in his basement. However, first he had one, then he's got two - that leads me to believe he's a collector of sorts. I've had plenty of these types in my shop and the biggest line is, "If you do this for me, I'll tell my friends and you will have lots of business." It's true - because nobody else will do the work so when they find someone who will, they tell their friends.

It was explained to me by the logistics directors wife that the trademark took years to get. It's a bit different because they paint all their trucks a certain color and all the graphics match the trucks. The marketing department is very sensitive to who uses these designs. When I do other work for them they set everything up. The don't allow me to type a single word or change a single color. Everything MUST have the TR thingy on it - even shirts which it becomes hard to read on the front with screen print.

What I could have told him is if Acme sends me the ready to print artwork, I'm happy to print it.

 

[Bobby H]

You could do hand made / fan art, replicate most things to the dot.... And the companies saw it as good publicity.

Even back "in the good old days" some companies were famous for going after people who used their IP without permission. All they had to do was find out about it. Disney, Warner Bros. and Harley-Davidson were well known for it.

I'm still on the bandwagon that copyright should be changed so that if you're not financially harming a company, copyright law shouldn't be enforceable.

Some things fall under fair comment. Using a company's logo for purely "editorial purposes" is (usually) legal. Still, some companies (cough: Disney) may still sick their lawyers on you anyway.

 

[Gino]

Not sure what year, but somewhere in the late 70's, my sister's high school band won a trip to perform down at disney world..... at disney world. She asked me to make up banners for both sides of the bus with all the disney characters on it. It had a fair amount of lettering on, too. They paraded that bus into the place and received compliments out the wazoo for the colorful and accuracy from the park people on the banners. Never did I get in any trouble, nor did the school. They did this right under disney's nose and got compliments..... not lawsuits.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Not sure what year, but somewhere in the late 70's, my sister's high school band won a trip to perform down at disney world..... at disney world. She asked me to make up banners for both sides of the bus with all the disney characters on it. It had a fair amount of lettering on, too. They paraded that bus into the place and received compliments out the wazoo for the colorful and accuracy from the park people on the banners. Never did I get in any trouble, nor did the school. They did this right under disney's nose and got compliments..... not lawsuits.

If it was before Jan of '78, the copyright Act of '76 didn't go into effect. If it was after, maybe because it was relatively new law and didn't know what to or not press.

Since can't remember what year, it's possible that the appropriate people to handle such things didn't have that ability to handle it like they do now. And plus, it would take case law to narrow do what is or isn't considered in the law, so even if this was '78 or '79, how much law would have gone through to codify what could or couldn't be handled at that time.

Edit to Add: Interesting, first Copyright case I could find after effective date of Jan 1 '78 is in that same year with Walt Disney versus Air Pirates. For "Cartoon characters are copyrightable outside the works in which they appear; use of them without significant alteration in parody or satire is not fair use". Ironic. Based on that, when that happened with your sister it was probably '76 or '77, given how quick Disney was after the Act went into effect. But I am speculating.

 

[Gino]

Could be. Not sure of the year anymore. Probably 1978 or 9.

 

[Johnny Best]

Steamboat Willy, which is the original Walt Disney mouse is in public domain

 

[Boudica]

Steamboat Willy, which is the original Walt Disney mouse is in public domain

'Steamboat Willie'? Really? Could there exist more than three organisms in the entire galaxy that give an ounce of ossified wombat snot that this image is public domain?

 

[White Haus]

That's impressive how quickly you pulled that up....

 

[Boudica]

That's impressive how quickly you pulled that up....

Thank you

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Steamboat Willy, which is the original Walt Disney mouse is in public domain

One thing to point out though, it is that very SPECIFIC version. Although there was a talk that the mouse could have been public even back in the 90s due to errors in the original copyright as it was. I do think it was used as a law student's paper and was even a threat of lawsuit by Disney. The color of the shorts and gloves and shoes as they are now are something else.