How can I use a football team logo on a t-shirt?:
With regards to football clubs, how much would I be able to put on the T-shirt without asking permission from the club itself? The logo? Just the name? Or the team knickname e.g Manchester United = the Red Devils ? If the team logo were in black and white would that be ok?
Thank you
Joseph’s answer: You cannot use a football team's logo or nickname on a t-shirt without permission. You could potentially do a t-shirt with a specific city's name displayed as standard typeface, but I would not recommend using the same or a similar colorway as the team's colors.
How do i go about getting copyright permission for songs that you can download from sites like limewire or rahpsody?: what we want to do, is burn music cd's from the website, and collect donations for them. all donations would go to a non profit animal rescue. also, should we keep record of what we burn or anything like that. any information you can give would be very helpful. we just want to do what we can to help save the animals that can't help themselves. thank you
Joseph’s answer:
You will need to locate the music composition owner(s) and the master recording owner(s) for any applicable songs that you want to use, and then get permission or a license for each proposed use. Getting permission and a license may be difficult, because there is no money to cover the license fees. You can potentially get a compulsory license for the underlying music composition under 17 USC Section 115, but this compulsory license would not cover the applicable sound recordings (i.e., the master recordings), so permission would still be required.
Online service providers such as Rhapsody and LimeWire do not give you this right. Rhapsody is an online music store subscription service with the ability to stream and purchase music. However, the Terms of Use with Rhapsody will not likely give you permission or a license to reproduce the songs/masters for commercial exploitation. LimeWire is a peer-to-peer network, so while there is SOME public domain music on LimeWire that you could potentially use, most of the music you will likely want to exploit will be copyrighted.
What kind of legal contract would I need for this?:
I've hired a freelance artist to do a few graphic designs for me, that I will be capitalizing on later. After I pay him, he has to relinquish all commercial rights he has to the piece, to me. This is to be done for several pieces of artwork. What kind of contract would I need for this? And would I need a new contract for every piece of graphic design?
Thanks
Joseph’s answer:
It sounds like you need an Independent Contractor Agreement (or other similar type of contract). However, I would recommend you retain an attorney to review your contract template to ensure that the contract sufficiently secures the rights to these graphic designs for you.
You will want to ensure that the Agreement has an irrevocable assignment of all copyrights, trademarks and other rights from the graphic designer to you, so that you own and control all rights to the graphic design works throughout the universe. Visual art works are not necessarily included in one of the nine enumerated categories eligible to qualify as works-made-for-hire, but your contract should include work-made-for-hire language for any non-visual, collective or supplemental elements that do happen to qualify as works-made-for-hire. The contract should also include provisions such as warranties & representations, indemnification, remedies and non-compete (i.e., you will not want the designer creating similar designs for your competitors and others, so the contract will need certain restrictions).
You would not necessarily need to do a full contract for each new graphic design piece. You can simply add a reference in the Independent Contractor Agreement to a Schedule or Exhibit that gets updated as new pieces are created (e.g., Schedule 2, Schedule 3...) and where each Schedule corresponds to a particular design piece. You would include in the applicable Schedule both a reference to the new design piece and any business or legal terms that are specific to the new piece. You and the designer would both sign that Schedule to indicate your acceptance of the specific terms, and then attach the Schedule to the Independent Contractor Agreement.