Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to talk about
copyright infringement and trademark infringement when you're selling designs online,
specifically on Etsy. Some of you might know that I've been a graphic designer for
quite a while and I also have an Etsy shop. These things that I'm going to tell you are
things that I do personally to avoid copyright and trademark infringement in my Etsy shop.
Now, I am not a lawyer, so take these with a grain of salt. But these are just the things that I do.
#1: I make my own designs. When I'm making a new design, I don't even look at someone
else's design. So in this case, I probably wouldn't have come up with this idea.
If your design resembles someone else's too closely, they can file an infringement claim.
So although we as graphic designers get a lot of inspiration from the internet, I personally
steer clear of actually taking a design that I found and making something similar. #2,
I don't use company names or logos in my designs. So this means no Disney, no Mickey Mouse, nothing
that resembles Mickey Mouse ears, no NFL teams, no Boy Scouts, etc. Now, I know some of you are going
to say, 'Well, there are tons of Disney designs on Etsy. So isn't that okay?' But here's the thing,
all of these shops are risking getting shut down, and they probably will get shut down eventually.
#3: I don't make products or designs with images that I found on Google. These are someone else's
images, and probably 99% of them are copyrighted. So it just makes sense to make my own designs.
#4: I don't use company names or logo names in my descriptions or keywords. I don't put them in the
title area, description or the tags section. #5: I check the Patent and Trademark Office website
and I use the Trademark Electronic Search System, which is better known as TESS. So to do that, I
just click on Basic Wordmark Search. And I type in the phrase that I'm wanting to use in my design.
So when I type in 'Hello,' here are all the wordmarks that have been trademarked. So let's
say I wanted to use 'Hello, sugar.' I'll click on this. And then I'll take the goods and services.
'Hello sugar' is trademarked for body waxing services. Now you'll want to go ahead and actually
search 'Hello sugar' by itself. So let's do that. Here are all the trademarked versions of 'Hello
sugar.' And these will be on different products. Some might be jewelry, some might be shirts, some
of these are dead, which means you could use them if you looked at what they're used for here. But
some are alive. Let's look at this live one. This trademark is for seeds for agricultural purposes.
So we'd probably be okay. If your phrase is trademarked for clothing or tshirts,
you can't use it in your designs. I'll put a link in my description for this website.
There are a few surprising things that you can't use in your listings. Some of those are onesie
or onesies. Gerber has a trademark for that. Some other ones are Girl Power, Hello Sunshine,
Who's your Daddy, Born to be Wild, American Girl, America the Beautiful, Live Laugh Love. And if
some of these seem random to you, well, they ARE random! And that's why it's good to search. You
never know if something is already trademarked. #6: I don't use fabric with trademarks to create
something that I'm going to sell on Etsy. So for example, if you buy this Chiefs fabric, and then
you make a mask like this, you cannot sell that unless you have a license with the Chiefs. And
believe me, they're not cheap. This probably seems a little crazy - most fabrics that have
licensed images on them like these, and Disney images cannot be used for commercial purposes.
So you can make a mask and wear it for yourself, but you can't sell it. Along the same lines,
it's not okay to use used recognizable brand items to make something else and then try to sell that.
So let's say you had a bunch of Pepsi cans and you cut them up, and you use them to make a
mirror frame or something like that. That is fine to do if it's for your own personal use,
but you cannot sell that. Now, you might be wondering why some big companies use other
companies logos and images, and it's no big deal. So a good example of this is a chips bag that
has Kansas City Chiefs branding on it or something similar. The thing that happens in these cases
are that Tostitos is paying the other company, the Chiefs, a lot of money to use their images.
So if you're wanting to actually do this, you can reach out to the Kansas City Chiefs or whoever
to see how much a license would cost but just know is probably not going to be very reasonable.
I've heard that the licensing for Disney is like $100,000 or something. Plus there are
other requirements - like they're very picky about the quality of the items you're selling,
because it's a brand. So those are a few of the things that I do to avoid
infringing on copyrights and trademarks. And I hope this video has helped you.
Alright, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave those in the comment section
below. And I'll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial. Thank you!!!