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Calvin being chased by an RC Airplane

Ken

New Member
You might as well pump out some Harley graphics while you're at it...
Good luck.
Ken
 

Lance

New Member
OK fellers, can we let this one drop. I reckon he might have the general idea by now.
Raw, this sort of thing gets discussed here repeatedly and to those who have been in this for a while, yes, it is old hat and does seem to be pretty obvious.
Don't get cheesed of, go do some reading of some old posts and get a feel for what we all learn here.
Maybe start with a search on 'copyright', that should fill in a coupla hours for ya.

Ya probably don't need 'eBay' graphics on ya trailer anyway. Show your ability and do something original.

best

lance
 
Unfriggin believable.... messing with copyrights is nothing to joke about or think that you can beat, in time you will get stung...some companies take this extremely seriously..i did some work for a Harley Davidson Dealership and in that we created many signs with the harley davidson logo, approx a month later we received a nasty gram from harley davidson motor company legal division for reproducing their logo without authorization...it was not enough to have authorization from the dealership it had to be approved by the company to ensure that it met their specifications....we politely told them that we thought we were in compliance, that we were a reputable company and had NO intentions of using their copyrighted material without approval and were under the impression that we were in compliance...we sent photos of our work and it met their requirements and we moved on with life...however it was extremely intimidating to be talking with a legal division that has no care about how much money it would take you to defend yourself...even though i still say we had done nothing wrong, it would still cost a considerable amount of money to hire a attorney to present the situation... additionally we had to sign a document stating that we would not display any photos of the job we had done on our webpage, brochures, etc... a enlightening experience to say the least and we have worked with multiple national and international companies and have never seen anything remotely similar to how HD defends their logo... i'd like to see the artist behind calvin get midevil and start busting these goofballs
 

OldPaint

New Member
an original concept....that takes imagination & some art talent.......not applicable to some here...........
 

williamson design

New Member
Copyright laws not only cover copying and selling a particular piece of art, design or illustration. It is also against the law to copy it and give it away for free.

Changing the artwork a little and passing it off as an original will not hold up in court either, because they will look at the intent of what has been done, and if the re-design has caused the loss of profit from the original design holder.

I learned the court stuff from a friend who owns a costume shop and had a purple dinosaur costume she rents out, it looked nothing like Barney the Dinosaur, and she claimed she had the costume way before the kids show came out, but "The Lyons Group" dragged her into court, and hit her with a C&D order and she lost. The costume is now gone.

If you cant get legal permission to use a graphic, I will agree with the oters here, create something original, or pay someone to draw it up for you.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
:thread
Well, DanStrikers brings up something I wasn’t aware of in this area. We’ve done many signs with logos for ‘Harley’, ‘Ford’, Chevy’ and numerous other big name local companies, also insurance firms and so on. We always got their art department or someone [higher than an artist] to sign off & date the final drawings. I always thought that was adequate. Holy Guano, I could be in a lot of trouble.

Now this brings to mind something that just happened to us about two months ago. A local real estate company changed their name. It was kind of a catchy name and the logo [he said he designed] was real nifty. In fact his whole advertising package looked really too nice for this guy to have done it himself. However, even though I know he was too cheap to have it done elsewhere I had to take him on his word.

Anyway, after haggling over prices, sizes and so forth, he said he would get back to me. Well, out of sight, out of mind, but later I saw someone else in that filed that said this first guy was moving forward. I then called him and he said he wasn’t because of some problems that he couldn’t go into. Turns out, he stole the ideas from a real estate company based in Canada. I looked it up on the Internet, and sure enough it was their logo to a ‘TEE’. Haven’t heard anything yet, but in this case, regardless of who does the work for this guy… if he gives you artwork camera-ready, electronic files or pictures and you have NO clue [honestly], and he signs off on it… are you still held accountable ??

How can I possibly know about every copyright throughout the world ?? :help:
 

Flame

New Member
Man, I got a good laugh reading this thread.

Yes, for those of you who don't remember, Unique owns a car lot.

And you know what? Selling those little Calvin stickers is illegal. And I'm not even the SLIGHT bit interested in selling them or anything copyrighted, and I simply haven't had to in my business. HOWEVER.... come on, who's SERIOUSLY going to get caught for it? I know of so many LOCAL sign shops who sell them, and I hear all the time on here that they'll get shut down if anyone finds out.

Funny thing is that I've NEVER heard of a sticker guy getting put out of business or even fined for selling those things. I just don't think it's worth the governments time to arrest guys who make copyrighted stickers.

Does that make it right to make them? No............. just tired of hearing how this guy or this guy is going to jail over it. I just don't see it as probable (SP?)

Okay, you can bash me now. I'm signing off for a few hours. Just thought I'd throw in my $0.02
 

Billct2

Active Member
"just don't think it's worth the governments time to arrest guys who make copyrighted stickers."
It's not the government that you gotta worry about, it's the company (Harley, Disney, CocaCola, Nascar) that will nail you.
 

Pat Whatley

New Member
I've posted this before but I know someone who was busted at a flea market in South Alabama for cutting Harley Davidson stickers. He had a plotter, a laptop, a bootleg version of Flexisign and the same clipart cd from Ebay.

A man went to the booth, asked him to cut a Harley Davidson logo. Paid and got his decal. Two hours later he was back with the Sheriff.

$1200 in legal fees, lost his computer, lost his plotter, and lost his business license.
 

OldPaint

New Member
i did signs for a EASYRIDER clothing store.....i like many here didnt ask......but i found out because i wasnt given good art work to work from.
I CALLED EASYRIDER in california.......and asked for THE ART WORK!!!!!! BOY DID I SCREW UP!!!!!! i was on hold, 2-3 times and finally got a guy who started askin me a bunch of questions as to why i need the art work. i told him i was being paid to do 3 signs with the words EASYRIDER and the little motorcycle like it is on the magizine. i could not duplicate the font they use and i figured since its their outfit i could get the artwork no problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!R-O-N-G- IS JUST WRONG....
they told me to C&D and do not make the signs as these people who was doing this had not gotten authorization form them to have a shop!!!!
well... I DID THE SIGNS, got my money.....and never seen em installed!!!!!!!! so here is another FROM THE HORSES MOUTH.... these people dont like copywrites being used without permission!!!!!!!
and flamey not worth it really...to bash you....dont do any good.....
 
:thread
Well, DanStrikers brings up something I wasn’t aware of in this area. We’ve done many signs with logos for ‘Harley’, ‘Ford’, Chevy’ and numerous other big name local companies, also insurance firms and so on. We always got their art department or someone [higher than an artist] to sign off & date the final drawings. I always thought that was adequate. Holy Guano, I could be in a lot of trouble.

Now this brings to mind something that just happened to us about two months ago. A local real estate company changed their name. It was kind of a catchy name and the logo [he said he designed] was real nifty. In fact his whole advertising package looked really too nice for this guy to have done it himself. However, even though I know he was too cheap to have it done elsewhere I had to take him on his word.

Anyway, after haggling over prices, sizes and so forth, he said he would get back to me. Well, out of sight, out of mind, but later I saw someone else in that filed that said this first guy was moving forward. I then called him and he said he wasn’t because of some problems that he couldn’t go into. Turns out, he stole the ideas from a real estate company based in Canada. I looked it up on the Internet, and sure enough it was their logo to a ‘TEE’. Haven’t heard anything yet, but in this case, regardless of who does the work for this guy… if he gives you artwork camera-ready, electronic files or pictures and you have NO clue [honestly], and he signs off on it… are you still held accountable ??

How can I possibly know about every copyright throughout the world ?? :help:


Gino, we as well worked with many national companies and HD was the ONLY company that ever pulled anything like this... as I said to them and I still contend we violated no law but their own policy...as they want to control the situation so that they know that there is no deviation to their design, so HD requires the sign production to be authorized by their corporate offices and not by the dealer who is only a franchisee. The owner of the franchise that caused this situation contracted us to do the signage for another store and we submitted the drawings to him for approval and also to HD corporate (which they approved) and with the approval they sent a folder that had the art on disk (with a stern warning not to alter any images) and specified colors.

I truly believe that HD is a exception and really takes things to a extreme but given the illegal reproduction of their images I guess I can not blame them.
 

Geary

New Member
I've got a 'infringment' story as well.

Guy up in Seattle used to draw and sell prints of "dead celebrities" out at the malls... thinking he had heard somewhere that if they're dead....it's okay? Wellll......der.........NOT! Long story short......The people representing Kurt Cobain filed and won a law suit. Last I heard the artist lost his house trying to fight it.

~Gear
 

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
We had a guy in West Palm Beach in the early 1990's when the Gerber Edge came out that was doing a regular business selling cartoon characters. A Time-Warner rep came in, bought a decal and the next day the sheriff arrested him and padlocked his shop.

His shop got sold at a sheriff's sale and he got felony jail time.

Yes - 99% of the time no one will do much about it ... but baby that 1% can ruin your life.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Especially if you have a pissy competitor. I’ve heard where many a folk have been turned in by disgruntled employees, angry customers or even just the guy’s throat you cut last week by lowballing him. Hm-m-m-m, looks like people will be a little more careful about how careful they are… or not !!

Double:thread
This has nothing to do with signs, but I had a neighbor one time report us for dumping illegal things in our dumpster. The jackass didn’t know I had surveillance cameras all around our property taping and actually caught him throwing the stuff in my dumpster. I wouldn’t have known it was in there, but he blew the whistle on himself. The idiot actually reported himself and got into a lot of trouble for it. He still hates me, but you know what… I don’t care.
 
I love it Gino...some people are so friggin dumb. I;ll be a TRIPLE THREAD PIRATE...I was consulting at a sign shop that was in its 3rd year and was really struggling and couldnt figure out where they were losing money....so I came in examined the books, watched employees work, studied their production process, met multiple times with their "operations manager" who was very concerned as it "reflected badly on him" in his own words....and couldnt really spot anything that was truly wrong...they had good sales, were pricing things correctly, were not paying too much for materials, were not overstaffed...so eventually we put in a few hidden cameras at this point I had my own suspicions.

well the "concerned operations manager" was making signs with the shops equipment and materials for his own customers and in some cases his "customers" even came to the shop to pick up their signs and wrote this guy a check to his own business.....he was right it did reflect badly on him.

I love camera systems and highly recommend them if you have employees...don't hide them, leave them in sight you will have better production, no theft...people will act like they should at work...they will work...sad, truly sad
 

Hollywood

New Member
Well if ypu look at his profile, it looks like he tring many things to "GET RICH". Selling Cars & Trucks, Making Stickers, and Installing Sterios. I don't know about you'll, but I hate when someone say's "I need stickers for my truck or windows". Stickers are the crap that your kids get in the $.25 candy machine. I call my stuff "Decals" because it just sounds alot more professinal.
 

roger

New Member
Well if ypu look at his profile, it looks like he tring many things to "GET RICH". Selling Cars & Trucks, Making Stickers, and Installing Sterios. I don't know about you'll, but I hate when someone say's "I need stickers for my truck or windows". Stickers are the crap that your kids get in the $.25 candy machine. I call my stuff "Decals" because it just sounds alot more professinal.


I wouldn't worry about being "professinal" untill I mastered the art of spellcheck!
 
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