Copyright football clubs

[Jase]

What are the things I need to stay away from when printing stuff relating to a football club, I know I can't use the badge, but I can have say Manchester City but need to omit FC , can I use photographs of the ground, match photographs, images of the shirt minus badge & sponsor.

[Glen]

No..no..no and no...lol..everything is well tied up and you risk massive fines if caught and i mean massive. :o .Like you said yourself stuff relating to a football club so you would still be infringing all sorts of copyright laws.. :roll:

[Justin]

Very grey area that you need to tread carefully into. Other members will be along soon to share experiences and hopefully some advice.

Only problem I ever had was with the Canadian company Zamboni. I had a great design made which was based around the Zamboni image and was sent a cease and desist letter. Luckily they were nice about it and actually said how good the design was! Just rubbed it in that little bit more! :cry:

[frizbee]

err No NO NO!!

If you say Manchester City and sell it in the manner of a football cap, then it is passing off, if you sell it on a stall in Manchester City Centre you could argue its a statement of fact.

Buy Official Patches put then on caps and flog them, its easier.

David

[Andrew]

As far as I know you can stick Manchester City on a t-shirt, pick the colour required and also have careful mention of football and be within the law. You will need to be very precise and sure of how you go about this so not to end up on the wrong side of trading standards. If you go outside of their stadium on match day I bet you have street sellers there selling merchandise that is not official and also not illegal.

Having said the above, I would still not go down this route as there is a fine line and you don't want to cross it.

[Jase]

Thanks I've been asked by a sports shop to provide some mugs, and don't want to be on the wrong side of the law, the owner wants something more celebrating the actual fans rather than the usual mug with football badge on ect.

[frizbee]

Contact them, they may grant you a limited license, we've never done football, but we have many licenses from manufacturers, some look at it as you will do it anyway so they may as well get a cut, some will just ask you for a huge amount up front or just ignore you.

You need to take some legal advise if you are going to try these, its such a fine line to walk, many do it and get away with it, it depends if you want to haev a business that gets away with it most times or a same good business.

On the totally stupid front, we had a storage warehouse called the Big Orange Warehouse (it was orange) Orange the mobile phone people made the change the signs as they had orange in white on a orange square which is a trademark even though they have several other words they lost. Now they have a big orange warehouse but have to call it the big freindly warehouse on the orange signs. Totally ruined there marketing after painting the huge building orange, if they had gone for red or blue they would haev been found.

David

[MugMonster]

There might be some leeway in this. Let's take Liverpool for example... the Liverbird image is a symbol of the city, and isn't a registered trademark of the football club. As long as you didn't put 'Liverpool FC' and just used 'Liverpool' with the Liverbird.. you could probably get away with it.

There must be other examples of similar local iconic images being used as a part of club crests which are free to use.

Tread carefully though... having said that, my experience with this sort of thing is that 9 times out of 10 if you're on dodgy ground, you'll get a 'cease and desist' notice from the copyright holder, rather than find yourself in court. In which case, stop.

Depends how much of a risk you want to take I suppose.. maybe safer to just leave it!!

[Jase]

Appreciate everyones input, all things considered I going to leave it, I think I got a little excited as this was potentially my first order, but I'm gonna concentrate on my Alvin Clein, Fred Baker and Hucci T Shirts instead...



only joking of cause

Jase

[MugMonster]

Appreciate everyones input, all things considered I going to leave it, I think I got a little excited as this was potentially my first order, but I'm gonna concentrate on my Alvin Clein, Fred Baker and Hucci T Shirts instead...



only joking of cause

Jase

I'd stick to Goochy, and Arm-arny if I were you ;-)

[lucozade]

interesting post, especially as we got done for copyright and it wasn't even our fault.

[Glen]

So true...and even for those that think its safe to supply to shops..do you honestly think that if they are caught the shop is going to take the rap or tell were they got them from.. :?: