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1. Thinking of starting a T-shirt Design Business.
   
   
2. Choosing the Right T-shirt Printing Equipment.
   
   
3. Finding the right T-shirt Supplier
   
   
4. Running Your T-shirt Design Business
   
   
5. Getting your T-shirt Design Business to Succeed
   
   
6. Protecting Your T-shirt Design
   
   
7. Getting advice for your T-shirt Design Business
   
   

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Protecting Your T-shirt Design

So you’ve perfected your latest T-shirt through painstaking hours of endless adjustments…and somebody’s stolen it. That can’t be fair, can it? No, it can’t be.

Protecting your work is one of those steps which many businesses will completely ignore through inconvenience. But those very same businesses could eventually be left to resent the decision. How do you protect your designs?

It’s possible to trademark your designs, but ultimately, a huge deficit in your budget. A more viable option is to copyright them. If you notice anybody stealing your work – most commonly practiced on sites such as CafePress where they don’t have to own their own equipment – it’s possible to send a C&D (Cease and Desist) to the support team of the website. This should invite an investigation in to the activity and providing that you can prove that the design has been unlawfully stolen, you’ll be entitled to every last penny back.

Copywriting is protective in the sense that it stops people taking your work and re-distributing it directly. But it can’t be relied on for issues where somebody has modified it significantly.

These are murky waters for your T-shirt design business, but the lenience is partly down to the fact that many designs are unknowingly similar. We all take inspiration from somewhere, and unless a design is clearly and obviously stolen, it can be very hard to prove in the legal sense – and expensive too.



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