hey what's up guys hope you're having a
great day today i thought we could dive
into
some examples of when legal action was
taken
due to a print-on-demand design
infringing on somebody's intellectual
property specifically we're going to
look at ohio state because they got a
very active legal team working for them
that
is not shy about defending their
intellectual property not just the you
know ohio state and the logo but they
actually went and uh trademarked a
picture of like
fans in the crowd at their games
spelling out ohio with their arms
and this design specifically has been
uploaded to multiple print-on-demand
marketplaces that we're familiar with
namely teespring but i'm also going to
show you an example with redbubble
and it's gotten those marketplaces into
some trouble so let's read some articles
that kind of sum up what happened and
see what we can take away from how this
works like from a legal perspective who
should well i don't want to say who
should really be worried because yeah
our aim is never to infringe but
should somebody infringe with their
designs like
what can we expect to happen as the
legal recourse so let's get started
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all right let's go check out this
lawsuit so this is the columbus dispatch
it says ohio state sues over t-shirt of
fans forming o-h-i-o
in its lawsuit ohio state alleges that
teespring's sale of this t-shirt is
illegal because the school has
trademarked the ohio image it's one of
several examples of an entity holding
rights to something besides its name
ohio state won a similar case a few
months ago
so this is from 2014 by the way it's not
recent um but and i actually couldn't
even find out what the actual resolution
to this case was i did some research and
uh page one of google did not lead me
where i needed to go to figure it out so
i'll tell you that up front but let's
look at how much
ohio state was looking for in alleged
damages because it is a lot of money
t-shirts featuring the image of ohio
state's fans forming the letters ohio
are spelling trouble for a rhode island
company that has been slapped with a
trademark infringement lawsuit by ohio
state university osu had the image
trademarked in 2012 but the school is
far from alone when it comes to owning
trademarks that extend far beyond normal
logos
t-shirts featuring the image of ohio
state fans forming the letters ohio our
spelling trouble for rhode island
company all right we just we read that
earlier
non-traditional trademarks cover a wide
range including things such as motion
sound color scent texture and shape
trademark law basically says you can
trademark anything that identifies you
said michael [ __ ] an intellectual
property attorney with michigan based
law firm brinks gilson and lyon
he blogs about the issue at uh his
website funkymarks.wordpress.com
typically when we think of source
identifiers we think of names sphinx
said but there's an increasing trend for
things that are not words colors for
instance boise state has
registered the color blue as it applies
to its field turf that's interesting
that they got away with that but
typically with trademarks you have to
also specify the
um the medium for which you're
protecting it on not just the color blue
you know
ohio state suit says that teespring inc
a t-shirt company that uses designs
submitted by customers has made shirts
with various osu logos buckeye leaves
and images of football coach urban meyer
as well as the ohio image without
permission and without paying licensing
fees to the university
ohio state complained to teespring in
december and again in january but the
company hasn't stopped does that sound
familiar guys like this is this is
literally like ohio state university
with a real legal team trying to stop
infringement okay because i know that
like everybody watching this has been
ripped off probably at least once and
been faced with the decision of like do
i try to fight this if i try to how do i
even start because some of these
marketplaces don't even have a mechanism
to use and then teespring has a
mechanism to use and they just ignored
ohio state university so it's crazy
teespring continues to solicit orders
for manufacture sell and ship infringing
and counterfeit products using the ohio
state trademarks ohio state said in the
suit which was filed in april and 2014
in the u.s district court in columbus
ohio
the university wants teespring
to stop its unauthorized use of osu
trademarks and seeks more than one
million dollars you got to do the the dr
evil 1 million dollars in damages
ohio state has been aggressive in
protecting its brand said bill foster
the chief strategy officer of
oleg ji a columbus marketing company
that has universities among its clients
a few months ago for example the
university won a similar lawsuit against
columbus-based t-shirt company screened
i wonder if they're still around
screened t-shirt
screened there's a facebook page there's
a twitter page
uh i don't see a website though which
means they may have had to close down as
a result of potentially actually i don't
know maybe they weren't that big too
it's possible they were just a small
ohio ohio gig
but it's possible that also losing uh to
ohio state university um they had to
close down
osu is still negotiating with screened
over the dollar amount of damages u.s
district court judge gregory frost has
set a mediation hearing for damages in
august
when it comes to protecting trademarks
in higher education the big public
universities tend to be more aggressive
than anybody else and tend to be more
aggressive on the athletic or spirit
side faust said they're protecting the
revenue stream there's so much money in
licensing sports icons and mascots
teespring did not return requests for
comment however in filing late last
month seeking to have the case dismissed
teespring argued that the company did
not create any shirt designs that osu
alleges infringe its rights and that it
has quote rejected and removed hundreds
of potentially infringing campaigns at
the request of intellectual property
owners including ohio state which is
interesting they said that because
remember if we just scroll back up
ohio state reached out in december and
january and
it didn't it wasn't effective like it
didn't get it didn't get whatever they
had reached out about removed they said
that
ohio state officials declined to discuss
the case since it is still pending
however university spokesman gary lewis
said that ohio state is very pleased
with the screen decision
of course because they won he noted that
the supreme court or the sorry the court
not supreme court the court went even
further and found that this was an
exceptional case and ordered the t-shirt
company to pay ohio state's legal fees
and damages a type of award that is a
forceful message and would be
and would be infringers against would be
infringers of our marks
a variety of schools and companies have
taken steps to protect the logos and
sounds and chants that they view you as
uniquely theirs so then it says that
university of arkansas filed to
trademark a sound which is absurd um and
if we just kind of go through here
towards the end
um
ohio state's filing for a trademark of
ohio image was a good move the lawyer
said of course because they're winning
lawsuits now protecting it
ohio state registered that image for all
kinds of things apparel by the way
apparel take note that means no t-shirts
blankets things like that they say that
when people see those letters being
spelled out they recognize it's coming
from the university here it seems that
consumers seeing the apparel might
believe that the item was endorsed or
sponsored by the university so yeah guys
i couldn't figure out the resolution
between them and teespring honestly
i know that's kind of anticlimactic but
i i searched i didn't i just couldn't
find anything
i did find this on casetext.com which is
not a website i'm familiar with but
maybe if you've been to law school you
might recognize it
and at the end after kind of scanning
through it and being like man i can't
read this this is this is too much i
can't do the lawyer jargon uh
all right section three conclusion and
it's not like a good conclusion that
tells me what the outcome was but it
says
as noted by judge frost in screened
selling knockoffs is selling knockoffs
regardless of who suggested you sell
them regardless of how many other
infringing products you decide not to
sell and regardless of how much of a
hassle it is to comply with the law
teespring is no different
so it's sounding like uh teespring
probably lost the case i don't know i
doubt they had to pay a million dollars
in damages if they did actually lose but
also again i couldn't find for sure if
they lost or not uh but yeah so
this is why
websites like amazon and amazon merch
like try so hard to algorithmically
police the submissions at scale which is
no easy feat right but that's the
concept is they're doing it at scale
because the alternative is you have to
do it manually and if you do it manually
you can't review every submission
if you did that you'd kill your business
and so then what do you do you let
people submit and then you have to like
actively manually
review when uh people like ohio state
university come to you and say hey can
you take this down it's infringing but
then the person receiving that do you
you're only human right so then do you
actually go and try to verify whether or
not this is actually infringing or not
if so
you basically need to be a lawyer and
you don't have to be a lawyer but you
kind of do
to make sure that you're right so it's
interesting guys let me know your
thoughts in the comments below
as far as like how this should be
handled
should teespring or screened have lost
the case should they have won the case
because it is kind of interesting it's a
gray area since the print on demand
sellers
submit the designs the marketplaces are
the facilitators of the transaction
between you know a buyer and
the seller and then they also print and
fulfill and ship out the product so it's
interesting right and of course the you
know the the lawyers the legal teams for
places like ohio state are more likely
to go after the marketplace because
they've got more money at least that's
how it works in my mind but i mean maybe
they couldn't go after the seller i
don't know
when i say the seller i mean the people
that uploaded the infringing image and
real quick i just wanted to show you one
other case so ohio state
uh started a trademark infringement suit
against red bubble as well and uh the
united states just district court for
the southern district of ohio in april 1
2019 not that long ago two years ago
held that redbubble inc was not liable
for direct infringement of several ohio
state university trademarks
in the ohio state university versus
redbubble inc
ohio state alleged that redbubble a
global online marketplace which allows
independent artists to upload and sell
products sold infringing products on
their platform redbubble's business
model relies on the automated use of
third-party services artists are
automatically connected with a
third-party manufacturer to make the
goods a third-party service to package
and ship the goods and a third party to
process payment for the goods that's a
good way of putting it so red bubble is
kind of the middle man for a bunch of
different services that ultimately
you know create the product
ship it out and also process payments
right
the court found that redbubble's actions
resemble those of an auction house as
opposed to companies that themselves
manufacture and ship infringing products
to a customer and granted redbubble's
cross motion for summary judgment that's
interesting so if teespring owns their
own production facilities in-house
then they wouldn't meet that definition
by my understanding whereas redbubble
being a middle man kind of like printfy
and farming the workout
they were not found
to be a manufacturer right they're found
to be an auction house
um this is probably why like printful
for instance anybody that's ever tried
to like i've never tried to infringe in
printful but i've sold designs that were
like not necessarily they weren't
fringing at all but it was more or less
like kind of like a funny one that maybe
was like a little too edgy like one
comes to mind because it still sells
pretty regularly it was a t-shirt that i
saw somebody wear on the joe rogan
experience basically again nothing wrong
with the design but it's a little bit
too edgy and printful just doesn't
fulfill it so anytime it sells i pop on
over to gear bubble
and then they're they're willing to
fulfill it so um anyways but also before
i wrap the video guys did just want to
mention that
um right here in this article from
law360.com
it says that the sixth circuit on
thursday revived a trademark lawsuit
filed by ohio state university against a
print-on-demand service that allows
users to create unauthorized buckeyes
gear ruling that such sites bear more
responsibility than a mere marketplace
like amazon so
they have
revived the case this was in february of
2021 so
ohio state's lawyers man they seem
vicious do not do not mess with them all
right ohio state university's lawyers uh
and i don't know what uh if this is
still going my guess is that these
things tend to get drawn out so that's
probably still going but uh they are
still fighting redbubble thanks for
watching guys before i wrap up i just
wanted to remind you that i wrote a full
print on demand course walking you
through how i make six figure print on
demand sales every single year you can
of course find a link to it in the
description and you can find way more
about that opportunity
thanks guys please like and subscribe if
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tomorrow with a new video
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you