Can you trademark clothing design [Detailed Response]

Last updated : Sept 16, 2022

Is it legal to copy clothing designs?

Unlike music, drama, literature, and art, fashion is not — and never has been — adequately protected under American copyright law, meaning clothing designs can be duplicated without permission.

How much does it cost to copyright a clothing design?

The registration fee can be anywhere between $35-55, depending on the case. If you file for copyright online, it can take around 3-11 months to get processed.

Should I trademark or copyright my clothing line?

So certain patterns that are original works for authorship can be and should be copyrighted. So as you see, copyright protects more of the artistic patterns and artwork designs on clothing, whereas trademarks protect the name, logo, or slogan used to identify the brand of the clothing company.

How much does it cost to trademark a clothing brand?

Trademark Application: This step usually costs $275 if you file online with the USPTO, plus attorney fees of $200 and up. You need to file a separate application and pay a separate fee for each class of goods or services your business engages in.

Can you sue someone for copying your clothing design?

Once your work or design has been registered with the Copyright Office, consider filing an infringement suit against your infringer. If successful, you can recover money damages in the amount of the monetary damages to your business and brand as well as your infringer's profits.

Can I copy a design and sell it?

It is illegal to sell, publicize and publish a copy of an artwork unless you have prior permission from the copyright owner. It is also illegal to publish and sell an artwork that's substantially similar to another original work of art.

How do I trademark a Tshirt design?

Register your mark nationally. Go to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website. Use the online registration system to submit your application. The system will request the name and address of the owner of the mark, a clear drawing of the mark, a description of the goods the mark identifies and the filing basis.

Do you patent clothing designs?

Clothing can be patented. Most of the time, you would patent the unique design of your apparel with a design patent. This is because you are claiming invention of the unique look of the clothing and not the clothing itself.

Can you trademark a phrase on a T-shirt?

Yes, you can trademark a t-shirt. You can trademark a name, logo, or slogan that appears on your t-shirts. You may register a trademark for any materials that identify and promote your particular goods and services. This information was provided by our founding attorney, Xavier Morales, Esq.

How do I protect my clothing brand name?

You can protect your Clothing Brand by filing a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Trademark registration comes with exclusive legal protections for your brand, including your brand name, logo, and catchphrase.

Do you need a trademark to start a clothing brand?

Using a brand name, your logo, or a slogan in any type of commercial trade is usually enough for you to establish your ownership of the trademark without needing to register it. However, commercial use does not provide much actual legal protection.

Can you sell clothing without a trademark?

Your clothing line must be unique with an original name, slogan, and logo in order to qualify for trademark protection. Generic or descriptive names won't cut it. Once you've chosen a name for your clothing line, that trademark becomes the element distinguishing your line from your competitors'.

How long does a trademark last?

A federal trademark lasts 10 years from the date of registration, with 10-year renewal terms. Between the fifth and sixth year after the registration date, the registrant must file an affidavit to state that the mark is still in use.

How do I know if a clothing name is taken?

You can search all applied-for and registered trademarks free of charge by using the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)'s Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS). If your mark includes a design element, you will have to search it by using a design code.

Should I get my logo trademarked?

Anyone whose logo identifies a business or profession should seriously consider trademark protection. Once you establish your trademark, the legal mark lasts forever. Just make sure to keep up with registration renewals at the five and ten year marks.

How can I protect my design legally?

One potential method of securing a product design is to apply for a copyright, which is a type of intellectual property protection. The purpose of a copyright is to protect an artist's work, and you can apply for a copyright even if you never intend to publicly reveal your creation.

How much of a design can I copy?

The 30 Percent Rule in Copyright Law.

How do you protect your clothes from being copied?

Register a Copyright for Any Original Prints or Ornamental, Non-Essential Design Features. If you ever do need to file a lawsuit, this will give your legal argument better grounds.

Is it illegal to copy a shirt design?

In other words, only the owner has the legal right to copy and reproduce their own work. No one can use anyone's intellectual property without the owner's permission. So, the creator of the original material has exclusive rights over the use of the content in any form under the copyright law.

How much do you have to change a design to avoid copyright?

Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent. See Circular 14, Copyright Registration for Derivative Works and Compilations.

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what's up bud it's Rob this is apparel success and what we're gonna talk about right now is trademarking your clothing brand if you're just getting started should you invest the money in trade marking your brand to protect it or should you wait a bit save that money and invest it in other things that will help fuel your clothing brand that's what we're gonna talk about in this video let's get into it this video here is sponsored by my buds over at design crowd and if you need designs made for your clothing brand I highly recommend you check out design crowd design crowds a website that helps entrepreneurs crowdsource amazing designs from designers all around the world for a special $100 VIP offer for apparel success peers only head over to www.onproperty.com.au/plus is that you do not start out by getting your clothing brand trademarked okay the reason for this is because when you're just starting out your clothing brand you probably only have a thousand or two thousand dollars to invest into your clothing brand to start and that's pretty much how much it costs to trademark your clothing brand okay so when you're just starting out it's just so unnecessary to get your clothing brand trademarked if you're not making any sales if you're not getting any orders nobody's gonna want to copy you anyways if you're not getting any orders and it's just not really important okay once you move up and you start getting 50 to 100 orders a month coming in on your website and you're selling that much you know every single month then you might think about actually taking some of them you're making some of the profits that you're making and investing it into a trademark so what I want to say here is that although I'm suggesting not getting a trademark from the very beginning when you're just starting up to save money so that you can actually invest into other things I do think that at a minimum you should at least be researching and checking out to see if other brands have already been created that have a similar idea to yours or using similar words to yours okay because you definitely don't want to invest all your time and invest all your money building a brand if there's already a brand out there who's trademarked already okay so I think what's most important off the bat is to actually do your research and see what else is out there in terms of what's already been trademarked with what are other people already doing so I said that at an absolute minimum if you have an idea for a clothing brand you have to be doing research first to make sure that no other clothing brands have done this idea before okay and have already taken your idea that's an absolute minimum is researching online and researching other clothing brands to see if your ideas already been taken if you want to take this to a whole other level without actually having to spend the money invest it into a full-blown trademark for your clothing brand you can do a trademark search okay you can either get a lawyer to do this or you can do it online and it's way less expensive than actually going forward with full-blown trademarking your clothing brand and this will just ease your mind and allow you to know that you know nobody else out there has already trademarked the name of your clothing brand in your region and you're good to actually invest the time and energy into your clothing brand now if your clothing brand is at the point where you're making say 50 to 100 sales a month whether it's in person or online and you do want to trademark because you feel like you're actually getting that momentum and you're like okay now I definitely want to protect this the beauty of it is if you do decide to trademark you usually don't have to pay it all upfront okay so most most law firms that you end up working with won't charge you all upfront for the trademark they'll usually charge you half up front half at the end and that's what we did I think it was like six or seven hundred dollars when we started and then now that her trademark just went through we owe another you know a thousand dollars or whatever it is at the tail end of it okay but that's just my really simple advice on trade marketing I think that if you're just starting up you're just getting started the idea to trademark from the very beginning is almost just as much of a mistake as investing in a crazy amount of inventory when you just don't even know how the markets going to respond to your clothing brand yet okay and that is a mistake that we made not with the trademark but with the inventory we were just way too excited we had you know we were just way too fired up about our clothing brand and we invested way too much money in the inventory and it's like even if we'd sold through all of our inventory you know we could have just reinvested in more then and gotten it it's just way too much risk that's unnecessary okay so if you're just starting up don't freak out and think that you need to trademark and do all this stuff just keep growing your brand and then when it gets to the point where you know you should trademark and you're gaining some momentum then and then you'll usually have the money and that's when you go through with it okay I hope you like this video let me know what you think in the comments below and if you haven't already check out my free clothing brand marketing masterclass video so 100 percent free to watch all you have to do to get access is go to WWL success.com slash masterclass can watch the whole thing for free and if you're a clothing brand that's currently struggling right now you want me to go over everything give you my feedback and suggestions for how you can bring your clothing brand to the next level you can sign up for a clothing brand review at wwl success com otherwise if you've made it to this point the video I want to tell you about the closed Facebook group that we have going on for apparel success there's a link in the description below follow that link join us in the group or a bunch of clothing brand owners all in there to support each other and answer each other's questions thanks for watching this video see you in the next one peace

Thanks for your comment Isaias Ouellet, have a nice day.
- Faustino Hashem, Staff Member

hey but what's up it's Rob this is a pair of success and in this episode here I want to talk to you guys about copyright infringement okay can I use a famous person inside of my designs can I take a character from a movie or a movie quote and incorporate it into my designs and can I go online and find a graphic and use it inside of my designs I want to talk to you guys about what needs to happen before that can take place it should be a really good episode and stay tuned so basically what we're covering here is called intellectual property rights okay and in order for you to use a famous person or a character from a movie or a movie quote or even the design that you find online inside of your t-shirts you have to have written permission from the owner of the intellectual property or a license okay and basically a license has two main components it has a term which is the length of time that you are allowed to use their designs inside of your work and sell it and a territory which is basically where you are allowed to use the designs and sell them you're probably wondering how so many stores and websites use all these characters from movies and famous people and other designs inside of their t-shirts and the answer is that they're probably doing it illegally okay if you do decide to use designs that aren't your intellectual property inside of your own designs you are not definitely going to be sued but you are at risk of being sued okay this is where we enter into the gray area of all this so if you do end up getting sued by these ding-dongs god forbid they still need to prove that the designs that you used are actually intellectual property theft and that you were in the wrong to use them okay and there's several criteria that they follow in order to come to this conclusion the first question that they'll ask to come to a conclusion on this is does the famous person the movie character the movie quote or the design that you found online have an identifying characteristic so an example of this is if I wanted to use the movie character scar from the movie Lion King inside one of my shirt designs and when you look at my shirt designs I clearly use the exact same guard that scar has over his left eye inside of my shirt designs this would obviously be a pretty clear giveaway that what I did was intellectual property theft and I'm using that exact same character from the movie another question that might come up is what if I wanted to use a character from a movie but do it in the style of a parody right like what if I wanted to turn scar into like Tupac right the answer is that you could still be sued alright the intellectual property owner could use what's called the fair use defense which has several criteria but the most important one is the potential effect on the marketplace okay they give the most amount of a weight to that so if my you know parody of scar and a Tupac design messes with the whole image of Lion King then that might you know lead to some negative consequences the last thing I want to cover here is if you're using a design that's similar to another clothing brand that might have been trademarked and it's not quite identical but it's similar okay there's a criteria for this as well and the first question that they'll ask is does the design cause confusion in the marketplace as to who's the owner of the design there are a lot of different criteria that they'll consider in order to decide whether or not there's actually confusion in the marketplace okay the first thing they'll consider is what is the strength of the trademark right does the other person have a trademark on all the designs maybe one design or just the word itself a word mark the second thing that they'll consider is what is the proximity of the goods to one another so if I'm selling in Canada and another person opens up right beside me with the same name and everything obviously there's going to be more confusion than if somebody opens up in China and starts selling to a completely different market the third is similarity of the trademarks right how similar are the brands actually to one another right the fourth is evidence of confusion right have people been maybe messaging you saying oh I thought you were you know this brand or you guys are really similar to this brand right because that would be evidence that there's actually confusion going on in the marketplace the fifth piece of criteria is what are the market channels being used right are you guys using the exact same marketing channels vi is intent what was the intent when it all started up were you trying to you know take advantage of an ongoing trend or did it happen spontaneously and it's completely out of your own original idea last one is the likelihood of expansion right does it look like these are big trends that are moving forward and all this is going to expand or is this all something that might be just short-lived I think this is a really good video to end on a general statement just to give you guys a sense of how I feel about this whole thing and how I think that you should move forward given this information and basically the reality of it is even if you were using completely legal designs you can still get sued okay so any time you're designing you should obviously always try to use your own original work and create everything originally and if you do end up using other character famous person inspired designs I think that you should just be really really careful and take everything that I said into consideration first I really appreciate you guys watching this video and if you guys have any sort of video topics that you want answered definitely write them in the comments section okay because I'm going to be answering them all and I really want to sort of create a community for clothing brand owners to come together here and really help each other grow all right so I really hope you liked this video and stay tuned for the next one peace

Thanks CirinnaO your participation is very much appreciated
- Faustino Hashem

About the author

Faustino Hashem

I've studied geography at Everglades University in Boca Raton and I am an expert in internet sociology. I usually feel jealous. My previous job was plastic surgeon I held this position for 4 years, I love talking about makeup and acro dance. Huge fan of Penn Badgley I practice ultimate frisbee and collect minerals.