Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tattoomom]

Hello from Florida!

My husband and I have MANY ideas for t shirts and are planning to start a website to sell the shirts. All of our ideas are origional (as far as we know!)

We have our business license, ficticious name and are registered to collect sales tax and are in the process of having our webpage built.

Now here's where we get confused and need help:

Can someone else see our shirts and "steal" them? How do we protect ourselves from being ripped off?

I've heard someone can steal our idea, get it copyrighted and then sue US???!!! Is THAT true???

Do we need to copyright all of our ideas?

Most of our stuff is sayings, words or phrases. Can I just put a C or TM there without actually registering it?

Do we need to Trademark our name and slogan?

Thanks :-/

[JSonnabend]

Particular designs on your shirts are protected automatically by copyright laws, but to sue, you'll need to register the copyrights first.  Many attorneys advise their clients to register their copyrights at the earliest possible time and not to wait to register when someone is found infringing.

The sayings themeselves may or may not be "copyrightable" depending on several factors, including the degree of originality and, practically speaking, the length of the sayings.

You might be able to obtain federal trademark registrations on the sayings.  That can be a veryeffective means of protection, but it does have some not-insubstantial costs associated with it up front.    In the meantime, you can place a "tm" next to any phrase you'd like.

To the extent that maintaining exclusivity in the market for your products is important to your business model, I suggest speaking to a qualified IP attorney about these issues.

- Jeff