Business question. Selling merchandise

[FedorandBjpenn]

I have a friend who started his own little clothing company who just now started seeing small profits. I am looking to join and help him and expand ideas.

I am sure all of our and my ideas have been done already but we still want to try and I have some questions.

When selling say T-shirts. If I wanted to design some shirts with quotes and pictures from movies, musicians, and famous people from the past do you need to have permission and give royalties always? Say I wanted to have a picture and movie quote from "The Sandlot" how do I go about this and what would we I need to do?

Or if I just wanted to have say a picture of Babe Ruth on a T-shirt for example...

 

[FedorandBjpenn]

bump

 

[Pittie Petey]

An 8 minute bump because it was 5 spots from the top?

 

[Lodbrok]

what u want to do is call contraband.

where you live?

 

[FedorandBjpenn]

what u want to do is call contraband.

where you live?

The United States.

Illinois

 

[FedorandBjpenn]

what u want to do is call contraband.

where you live?

 

[johnyboy]

Sandlot was a sick movie

 

[Oeshon]

Would most likely violate copyrights/trademarks. I'd be very weary basing a business off that. Specially if you use a paywall like paypal and have all your cash frozen.

You are trying to make money off other people's IP

 

[Rvd Slmr]

How is it even a question about movies that aren't close to be in the public domain ?

 

[xbone19]

the website 6dollarshirts uses movie quotes and all sorts of things like that, I doubt they pay royalties, must be some type of clause. parody law idk

 

[blitzk]

why don't you come up with your own lines? sort of like the guys over at Buy Me Brunch
they make some cool shit.

 

[lowsingle]

You can only use copyrighted material if its for parody or educational purposes (you can use film clips in a documentary on movie editing for example)

Otherwise you would have to contact the owner of the IP (the film studio that owns the rights to the movies) and work out a deal with them

A lot of small time operations fly under the radar, but copyright law states that if they dont defend their property, they lose it. So if all these companies make sandlot shirts and the owner doesnt do anything, the characters depicted become public domain. This means that large companies often sue 2 person companies for exorbitant amounts

 

[GSP_37]

You can't just try to make money off of someone else's likeness. You may as well make Extreme Couture skull t-shirts or Clench Gear or TapeOut or Affection or UnderAmour. Is your stuff going to be made in China?

 

[thetruth2709]

In short yes TS that is illegal, you cant profit from somebody else's ideas

 

[dc007]

It's illegal. People do it and have to pay all the time. I know a guy who runs a successful clothing line and store and that's exactly what he does, parodies of designers and other pop culture stuff and they get sued all the time and he has to pay.

 

[DeepCover]

Obama bin Biden

Print that shit free of charge. You're welcome.