Trademark or copyright a tattoo [Solved]



Last updated : Sept 24, 2022
Written by : Niki Pecanty
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Trademark or copyright a tattoo

Do I own copyright of my tattoo?

Most people think, and at least one court has determined, that the body can be considered a fixed medium. Therefore, tattoos are subject to copyright protection. And since the person who creates the tattoo and puts it on somebody's body is generally the tattoo artist, that artist, by default, owns the copyright.

Can tattoos be protected by copyright?

Yes, tattoos can be protected by copyright. Copyright can protect pictorial and graphic works so long as they are fixed in a physical object and display originality.

Can I tattoo trademark?

1) the tattooed person is using a reproduction or copy of the trademark; 2) the tattooed person is in commerce without permission; and 3) the use is likely to cause confusion. Under this standard, nearly anyone with a trademark-based tattoo could be subject to a trademark lawsuit.

Can a company sue you for a tattoo?

You may be eligible to file a tattoo compensation claim if you have suffered an injury while getting inked or during a tattoo removal procedure, and if the injury was due to the tattooist's mistake or negligence.

Can you be sued for a copyrighted tattoo?

1: Yes, it's possible to get sued over the copyright on a tattoo.

How are tattoos not copyright infringement?

Under copyright law, the tattoo artist is able to protect his/her/their art (even if it is on someone else's body) and to prevent others from using or copying it without the artist's permission.

Is it illegal to copy someone's tattoo?

First of all, you're directly or indirectly trying to get your tattoo artist in some serious legal problems. If it turns out that your wish tattoo design is a copy, and the original tattoo artist has not approved of it being reused, then your tattoo artist could face a copyright lawsuit, which they would 100% lose.

Can a company fire you for tattoos?

If you have a tattoo or piercing due to or based on a protected characteristic, such as your religion or national origin, employers cannot discriminate against you for that body art or refuse to provide accommodations unless they can prove that doing so would place undue hardship on their business.

Are Disney tattoos legal?

Yes, Disney tattoos are legal, but it may be illegal for a tattoo artist to tattoo the logo on you. To do the tattoo, they need a license or permission to use the design from Disney for tattoos, as they would be making money using Disney's intellectual property. The design itself will be covered by copyright.

What jobs are against tattoos?

  • Healthcare Professionals. Many hospitals and medical offices require some piercings and tattoos be removed or covered.
  • Police Officers and Law Enforcement.
  • Law Firms.
  • Administrative Assistants and Receptionists.
  • Financial Institutions and Banks.
  • Teachers.
  • Hotels / Resorts.
  • Government.

Can a tattoo artist copy a design?

The biggest issue you need to contend with in using another artist's work is copyright law. Artists who create their own work, even if they publish it online, own the rights to those images, so you could be violating copyright law in taking that design to use for your tattoo.

Who owns the tattoo the artist or the client?

The main two strictly upheld tattoo copyright regulations are: that artists cannot take another artist's work and tattoo it onto their own client. And: the art that they use for their clients must be original and unique to that particular artist.

Can you be denied a job because of tattoos?

There are no current laws that prohibit employers from discriminating against people with visible tattoos.

Can you refuse to employ someone with tattoos?

Currently there is no legal protection given to workers with tattoos, so employers can lawfully refuse to recruit someone with tattoos.

Do jobs discriminate against tattoos?

Unfortunately, tattoos fall under employment dress codes. As employers have the right to impose dress codes, they are free to set grooming and appearance policies at work. This means they can choose not to hire individuals with visible tattoos or ask them to cover up.

In which field tattoo is not allowed?

Tattoo is prohibited in jobs like IAS, IPS, IRS, IFS, Indian Defence Services, Army, Navy and Air Force etc. Tattoo is allowed in some government jobs like Clerk and Probationary Officer in Banks, Engineering Services, PWD department etc.

Does the FBI allow tattoos?

Kellie: Yeah, they are allowed. Now I would suggest that if you're looking to get a tattoo, be very judicious in where you place it, just because the image of the Academy in the FBI is extremely important. So just be judicious in your placement of your tattoo. Stephanie: Okay.

What high paying jobs allow tattoos?

  • Doctors.
  • Nurses.
  • Surgeons.
  • Anesthesiologists.
  • Therapists.
  • Veterinarians.
  • Dentists.

What is considered copying a tattoo?

Tattoo copying occurs when a "tattoo artist" rips off another artists design and copies the tattoo line for line. Unfortunately, tattoo copying happens every single day and may people still do not understand why it is wrong. Here's the thing, tattooers are artists and their tattoos are their original artwork.

Is Mike Tyson's tattoo copyrighted?

Whitmill says that Tyson's tattoo, one of the most famous in the worlds of sports and entertainment, is his (Whitmill's) intellectual property, and its unauthorized reproduction in the film—on the face of actor Ed Helms—amounts to copyright infringement.


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Trademark or copyright a tattoo


Comment by Roderick Larralde

hey welcome today's video I'm Rick chapel with dmca agent service comm so today we're taking a look at copyright vs. trademark vs. patent this is an area where there could be some confusion so hopefully stepping back and looking at these three main categories of intellectual property will help you understand each one so start with copyright copyright is the right to exploit a work of authorship original authorship actually and so let's just look at the classic example the Harry Potter books so JK Rowling decides to write another Harry Potter book when she finishes she's automatically granted what's known as common law copyright now this form of copyright is pretty weak so she's actually one ago gonna want to go ahead and register with Copyright Office to get a stronger form and if she does that within 90 days she's granted additional rights under copyright law and so she's going to do that now once she has that in place you know how is she going to exploit that work of authorship well for an author their traditional approach would be to work with a publisher she would sign a contract with a publishing house and she would give that publishing house the right to make copies and sell her book and in exchange she would get a healthy advance and royalties on each sale and so in that scenario she has exploited her original authorship under copyright law now obviously she can do it in other ways too she can sign a deal with the movie production company to turn the book into a movie maybe audio books you know there are different approaches to exploiting that authorship but again we're gonna give the person who took the time and effort to come up with this creative work the right to quite frankly make some money off of it now there are cases where people don't make money off of it if you look at open source software for instance people will create it just as you know a good goodwill effort as part of the online community or something of that sort but you know generally we're talking about exploiting it for some type of financial benefit the original work of authorship of course doesn't have to be a book it can be anything that's creative software code images music there's a variety of different areas so if you're interested in looking at those you can go the Copyright Office website and they have actually some what are called circulars which give you a pretty good idea of you know the different things so again we're talking about the right to exploit a work of original authorship a trademark is a word phrase or symbol that distinguishes a source of goods for consumers okay this is really important so what we're talking about is basically giving consumers confidence that when they see a particular word phrase or symbol that the goods that are being sold under that word phrase or symbol have a certain quality so let's talk about tires okay well how about Goodyear okay we all know Goodyear tires and you have a particular opinion regarding the quality of those tires that you associate with Goodyear and so when you see the Goodyear name where you see the could dear little flying foot thing the symbol you know you know okay that's good you associate that and so maybe you buy it maybe you don't doesn't really matter but you have that confidence that when you see that name and that symbol you know what you're getting now if another you know cheesy cheese ball company in China you know puts together some really you know horrible quality tires and they call them Goodyear good years let's say that an S to the end of it you know at that point you know are you going to be able to recognize that hey this is different companies a Chinese company and maybe they're making you know crappy tires that are gonna blow up after a couple miles you know they're gonna be a much lower quality and so for consumers you know that could be confusing and in trademark law when we have a trademark infringement claim that's exactly what is alleged that one company has you know used a word phrase or symbol that is so close to the trademark of another company that's causing confusion for consumers so a trademark is a word phrase or symbol that distinguishes the source of goods let's use another example if you see a swooosh symbol kind of that round teardrop bending up symbol you are almost immediately going to associate it with Nike that's their their symbol and everybody kind of knows what it is and so if you aren't in sports apparel or something of that sort and you see that well you expect a certain level of quality you're buying a Nike product again you may think it's great you know it's terrible you know whatever but you have confidence that when you see that symbol you're getting you know whatever it is that you expect and if you got something radically different well that would cause all kinds of problems in the consumer market because people wouldn't be able to trust in the quality that they you know they thought they were getting when they were buying something so that's a trademark now patents patents are something kind of entirely different a patent is the right to exclusively exploit an invention and so what we're talking about here is actually fairly broad because people are really creative so there are a lot of different types of patents that can be patents for processes different types of machines all kinds of different things and really frankly you'd probably want to talk to a patent attorney at some point if you're getting anywhere near you know issues related patents but basically the idea here is that if somebody invents something it's unique and something new then we're going to give that person the right to exploit it much like in copyright you know the author has the right to exploit the book they just wrote so we're gonna give them the right to exploit that invention for the certain period of time or rather lengthy period of time and the reason we're going to do that is because we want to promote inventions we want people to go out and invent things and if there was no patent protection well you know why would people go out and invent things there there would be much less emphasis to do so much less motivation to do so because here's what would happen I would go out and let's say I invent something some form of software that works it's gonna revolutionize the online market and I put up my crappy little website and I launch it and I've got you know my entire capital budget for launching this business is the $400 I have of my Capital One credit card okay well Google happens to run across my website and you know a week after I launched it and they take a look at the product and they say wow this is amazing this is gonna revolutionize everything and so they buy the product from me for $199 and then they just reverse engineer it and make their own copy and go out and sell it now who's going to win that battle me or Google and you know the cold hard truth is Google has billions of dollars I have four hundred dollars I think we know how that's going to go not well for me so with patents you know we're going to give that exclusivity to the invention to exploit th


Thanks for your comment Roderick Larralde, have a nice day.
- Niki Pecanty, Staff Member


Comment by JertErrorgoB

well here's the great question if you got a tattoo of a trademarked logo or slogan could the owner of the trademark sue you my name is Andre Minka from the founder of trademark factory and here's my answer to this question trademark owners can sue you for trademark infringement trademark infringement is only there when you are using the trademark okay and want to see using it has a very special meaning in trademark law it means you are placing that trademark on products or placing it somewhere that is being consumed by the end customer while they're getting your service so it has to have some commercial aspect to it you have to be selling products or even gifting products or offering services for free or in exchange for money it has to be something that relates to you offering products and services marked by the trademark to the marketplace otherwise there is no use if there's no use then there is no infringement unless there's another way to look at it unless what you do disparages the brand right so if you just make a tattoo and nothing else that's not trademark infringement it's not an infringement at all and you can take photographs of that and post those photographs that's gonna be okay unless the context of that is either commercial or disparaging right so like for example if you tattooed yourself and decided to participate in a porn movie some brands might be a little bit upset with that so they could go after you for that would not necessarily be directly trademark infringement but that would definitely be disparagement and die Lucien and all sorts of long words that lawyers will find to go after you so think about it from from from this perspective are you trying to sell something with that tattoo are you trying to create a problem for that brand are you being nasty if any of that checks out probably you're gonna find yourself sued if all you do you're just a big fan of a brand and you want to tattoo it on you know your body and that's really where this ends you could post your pictures on facebook I guess or you know a dating website a few things that's gonna get you more interest from other people you could still get away with it but as soon as it becomes commercial as soon as it starts to disparage the original brand that's when your problems will start I hope this answers your question and if it does great make sure you subscribe get notified whenever the next video goes live and if you have another question for me something I haven't answered before make sure you post a comment below I'll do my best to respond to it because I always look at all comments personally and if I see an interesting question I do my best to record a video just like this one to answer them until then I will see you in the next video


Thanks JertErrorgoB your participation is very much appreciated
- Niki Pecanty


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