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[Loujansal]

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what the laws are governing the use of trademarks on T-shirts for personal use only. Here's my circumstance: Our high school German club has an an exchange program. The kids from Germany visited us first. When we visit them this summer, we'd like to give them T-shirts, as a gift. The t-shirts would have a collection of logos from places they visited worked together as a single design. It's a small number, one-time piece of art given as a gift and no profit is produced. If the logos are part of an artistic design, are we infringing on trademarks or is this considered fair use?

[JSonnabend]

That may be a close call, but if the artwork on the shirt taken as a whole is "art", then your use probably does not infringe any trademark rights and is likely fair use of any copyrights involved.

- Jeff

[BobRoberts]

..."but if the artwork on the shirt taken as a whole is "art"..."

Interesting, I hadn't thought of that.  I suppose if someone places 15 different logos on their shirt, it may begin to lead another away from associating the shirt as being a source identifier for those 15 represented companies (though, from time to time, road-race T-shirts wil have several logos on them, showing the sponsors of their race).   

Trademark rights are territorial, so if the companies only have a presence in the US, then showing their mark in Germany should not pose a problem; at least until your friends return to the states with the T-shirt on and get held at the border (just joking!).  Probably unlikely that the marks you are speaking are strictly US, but thought I'd throw that out. 

I wonder if a caption about the marks would remove it a bit more, as speech?  "My favorite US Companies!" or " We survived Company Tour 2011!"

Just thinking, there is no commercial use here.  I don't recall off the top of my head whether there must be a commercial use of the trademarks before infringement can be found, or after Trademark owner(s) establish ownership of a trademark, if infringement (commercial use or not) is determined strickly by the Polaroid (or other Circuit factors) analysis... 

And, just wondering whether they are planning on printing the shirts themselves or going through a T-shirt maker.  If the latter, I'm wondering whether they will have problms finding a T-shirt printer that will reproduce several companies Trademarks without written authorizatin from the company.  Perhaps?

[JSonnabend]

What do you mean by "commercial use"?

- Jeff

[Loujansal]

Thank you for your thoughtful replies.

In response to the question about "commercial", I probably should have said, there is no intentional to ever sell the t-shirts for profit. In fact, we will pay for the cost of having the shirts printed, one- time only. We do plan to have a professional print the shirts.

I will combine the logos into a design, an artistic approach that will present a single image from the collection.

The idea about qualifying the design with a statement is a good one. It's obvious to us what the logos mean, but it may not be to the casual observer.

I have total respect for personal property and ownership, but if you want to tell someone about about all the fun places you visited, it's impossible to do so without using the names. I guess I'm trying to look at this as a visual interpretation of the verbal. So, perhaps it's best to keep it more like a work of art.

[BobRoberts]

"What do you mean by "commercial use"?"

Sorry, I meant (at the time) that there didnt' appear to be any use in commerce (which seems to directly affect, what, 3 or 4 polaroid factors straight-out?).