Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Illinois

Re: Protecting T-Shirt Designs

Copyright law will protect your designs. You have copyright protection at the moment of creation. However, to make sure you have the greatest amount of protection, you should register your design(s) with the Copyright Office. Go to www.copyright.gov and download Form VA. $45 for each application. The Office is also beta testing on-line applications, so see if you can do that. It will save you time and a little money.

Also, if you give your t-shirt design a distinctive product name, that can be protected by trademark law.

Please contact me if you have any questions...

Thanks,

Don Simon

Re: Protecting T-Shirt Designs

if your work is original enough it would be protected by copyright law. If you produce a number of different designs you may want to file an application for copyright registration for the multiple designs together (it will be less expensive than each one by itself). You can go to the US Copyright Office website www.copyright.gov and print up a two page form. The cost is $45. You can have an attorney do this for you, but you can save money by doing it yourself. If you are using hte same design over and over on different clothing and/or products, then you are talking about a trademark, not a copyright. Hope this helped, Justin Lampel