Copyright question

ssanders · Mar 7, 2006

What is the rule on copyrighting an image that uses another company logo in it (but not entirely).

Like, can you copyright a logo that uses the SunKist logo and change it to like... WaveKist and copyright that?

If not... how do t-shirt companies get away with it (the ones that have designs that look exactly like other company logos only make fun of them... or are they just not copyrighted?)?

I'm asking because a guy at my church wants to take a logo and change one of the words to "God". It'll look almost identical except for the word being "God" (safe font, colors, etc.)

He doesn't really want to sell them for profit, but does want to protect it from being ripped on by other people... can he copyright it, or is it such a rip off that its un copyrightable (its the same font, same look, just god intead of geek)

thanks.

jberryhill · Mar 7, 2006

One of the fascinating things about questions like:

how do t-shirt companies get away with it

is that it assumes they do get away with logo parodies. If you have a gross of Hanes whites and a silk-screen printer, you are a t-shirt company. They "get away with it" by being small time operators who are hard to find. But there is a wealth of litigation over these things when a not-so-small operator becomes findable. TM enforcement folks with copies of injunctions used to patrol the parking lots of Grateful Dead concerts looking for "Dead-O-Poly" shirts which parodied the Parker Brother's Monopoly game, among others.

http://www.metnews.com/articles/2005/reminiscing090805.htm

He doesn't really want to sell them for profit, but does want to protect it from being ripped on by other people

Okay, so he wants to use Best Buy's "geek squad" logo to make "God squad" t-shirts, but he doesn't want anyone else to make them? Do you think Best Buy might have felt that way about their shirt in the first place?

ssanders · Mar 7, 2006

this is what i told him, but when he said the thing about the t-shirts companies, i didn't even think about them being too small. thanks for the help =)