Expert: Shannon Moore - 2/20/2010

Question
Dear Shannon,

I am a 16-year-old high school student in Dubai and was very excited up until recently about an upcoming competition among high school students in Dubai known as the YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS COMPETITION (YEC) which takes place every year. Basically, teams from participating school sell products that they've either made themselves and/or revolutionised in stalls at a popular local mall. Our team of three other friends and myself had an idea for our stall to be along the theme of "music and popular culture", and thus submitted to a top printing company our design ideas, which were about 60% images of The Beatles, Jimi hendrix, The Simpsons, Madonna, Family Guy, etc. that we had copied from the internet. The rest were our own designs. The supplier explained to me that we might get into trouble with copyright issues if we were to print images from the internet on shirts and mugs and sell those. Our intentions are harmless and the pictures are not on any recording label, DVD cover or such- they are just stills from shows or musical icons performing.
What kind of problems are we dealing with here and are there any ways to work around them so we don't have to reconstruct our line of products?
Thank you in advance,
Samantha.

Answer
Dear Samantha,

Unfortunately, the supplier is correct. Copyright protection extends to all representations be it CDs, photos, etc. In your case, the copyright owners of the images are either the photographer or the recipient of the images (e.g. magazine, web site, etc.)

Since this is for school, I'd suggest looking into fair use. The only thing you may want to really reconsider is selling any goods; at least, discuss your plans with a copyright attorney first.

Here's some info about fair use:

"One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords...

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html - Link to above

Hope that helps! I wish you much success & happiness in all your ventures!

Warmest regards,
Shannon Moore
http://www.tmexpress.com
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