Sound advice: To print or not to print, that’s the bull session here

We’re a company that prints your designs the way you want them, straight forward and hassle-free. And if it was down to us, we’d have no qualms about printing Ryan Gosling’s pretty picture on a T-shirt for your sister’s birthday. Or your football team’s crest on a beach towel to neatly mark your territory on sun loungers. As much as we see the point here, our hands are legally tied, though. Copyrights and personality rights need to be respected, so we think it’s about time to put the record straight. We asked the people in the know: our graphics and design team. Read their answers to your most frequently asked questions.

I’ve got a Facebook fan page for my Partner Shop. Can I simply copy and paste image material from Spreadshirt’s homepage and use i.e. image material of the latest campaign?

You can’t – unfortunately – copy any images. Our Flickr-Account is a source for Shop Partners to avail themselves of product pictures that can be used for promotions in their shops.

I checked out the US Marketplace and saw a number of really cool designs there. Why can I not order or use these designs on the european Marketplace? And are American copyright laws more easy-going?

These are two different platforms with different country locations of the company. It creates a situation with different jurisdictions, and this is why some of our US Marketplace designs differ from those in the EU.

I wanted to print a photo of George Clooney on a mug for my mum’s birthday and write “Mrs. Clooney“ on it. The design got rejected. Can I not use photos of stars at all, and what’s with their names?

This is impossible due to personality rights. The implication for us is that we cannot print any images depicting famous people (or their names) as long as we don’t receive permission in writing.

Since there’s a copyright on the logo of my favourite show, we wanted to open a shop by way of spoof while rendering the original logo. The design we came up with was still rejected by Spreadshirt for copyright reasons. Why is that?

If you render an image in which the original copy-protected design can still be recognised, we are not allowed to print it. This would be unlawful plagiarism .

Seeing that I can get access to all sorts of photos and designs on Google – and even store them on my computer – why can I not use these images to print them on T-shirts since they are readily available online?

The internet is a zone that’s ruled by law just like the “real world”. If you are able to download an image somewhere it doesn’t mean that it’s legal to reproduce it. And in our case it’s also for the purpose of commercial use (since we’re selling the print).

We have a fan club in support of our favourite singer, and we wanted to print hoodies showing the face of our idol. Spreadshirt rejected this, and we don’t think it’s right as we’re taking up the cause for a star – and we‘re officially recognised as well. How can this be?

Official fan clubs usually hold the usage rights issued by the artist. It is very important for us to receive it so that we are legally allowed to print the image in question.

Did you find our answers helpful? And are there any burning questions you want us to answer? Any issues you have encountered? Please tell us in the comment section below!