Putting Someone Else's Logo or Character on Something

Two rules, doing two different jobs

People talk about this as one subject. It is two.

Copyright covers the made thing. A drawing, a photo, a song, a character somebody invented. It belongs to the person who made it.

Trademark covers the name and the logo a business trades under. Its job is not to reward creativity. Its job is to stop shoppers being confused about who made what.

So a cartoon character is usually both at once. The drawing is copyright. The name and the logo are trademarks. You can trip over either one on its own.

The bit everyone gets wrong

Somewhere you have probably read that once you buy something, you can do what you like with it. The words for that are first sale, and it is a real rule.

Look at the wording in the block above and find the last two words. That copy.

The rule is about the object. You bought a book, you can sell that book. You bought a pair of trainers, you can sell those trainers. The wording says you may sell or otherwise pass on that copy without asking the copyright owner.

It does not say you can take the picture off the thing and put it on other things. Buying one poster does not buy you the artwork. That is the single most common wrong answer on this whole subject, and it turns up on pages that sound very sure of themselves.

Buying a design file does not change this

There is a whole market selling design bundles, cut files and clip art for people who print things.

Some of it is fine. Some of it is somebody else's character sold by a person who never had the right to sell it. Buying it from them does not hand you a right they did not have.

Read what you were actually given. Not the headline on the listing, the terms. If nothing tells you in writing what you may make and sell, assume you were sold a picture and not a permission.

The logo question

This one is simpler than people want it to be.

The test is confusion. Would somebody looking at your thing reasonably think the brand made it, sold it, or approved it. If yes, that is the problem, and it does not matter that you drew it yourself or that you are 15.

And the near miss does not save you. The office that registers trademarks says plainly that marks do not have to be identical to be confusingly similar. Tilting it, changing one letter or drawing it in your own handwriting is still the same mark to a normal person's eye, which is the eye the test uses.

What is actually clear

Three things you can do without this hanging over you.

1. Sell the actual item you bought. The thing itself, passed on to somebody else. That is what first sale is for.
2. Sell work you made yourself. Your drawing, your photo, your design. It is yours because you made it.
3. Sell work you have written permission to use. Permission in words you can point at, from somebody who had it to give.

Everything else needs a moment of thought before you print thirty of them.

Before you print thirty of anything

Ask one question. If the person who owns this saw my table, would they think I was borrowing their name to sell my thing.

If the answer is yes, that is the answer.

None of this is here to tell you your idea is bad. It is here because getting this wrong usually does not end with a lawyer. It ends with your listing gone, your account in trouble, and forty printed things in a box under your bed.