By Ethelyn J. Morris (artist). Priscilla Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. (publisher). [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
So you’re a clothing designer. You live to see your sketches come to life in fiber and fabric. Whether your work is posted on esty or walking down the runway there’s no better feeling than sharing your designs with the world. That is till they turn up on eBay for half the price from a seller you did not authorize to use your patterns. You want them to stop, but you’re not sure how or even if you can make them. Occasionally it may even be the other way around, where someone is claiming you stole their copyrighted work, but you were only selling a plain hat. How could anyone possibly own the idea of making a plain hat?
You’re collaborative, often working informally with a team of designers and distributors. Sometimes you draw up contracts as part of business, but sometimes you just focus on getting your clothing out the door. This may work out alright, until someone on your team leaves taking your design and uses it to create their own clothing. Or your distributor starts selling clothing made with your pattern without your permission. Clothing that you don’t profit or get credit from in any way. What's even protectable in clothing and fashion?
You might even have your own website. And your users are great. You want to be able to gather data from users, but you want to do it in a way that avoids lawsuits and looking like you're the NSA. You wonder what kind of notice you need to provide your users, and how to draft a privacy policy and terms of use that lets users clearly know the conditions of their use of your app. You wonder if you should have a specially tailored privacy policy and terms of service instead of copying and pasting Facebook’s. Hint: You should.
That’s why New Media Rights provides free, reduced fee and competitive fee legal services. If you’re a clothing designer we can help with the following issues.
- Evaluating patterns to see if they have copyright protection.
- Writing Terms of Use and Privacy Policies.
- Counseling on user privacy, data aggregation, and trademark issues.
- Review and writing of contracts.
- Enforcement strategies for designs.
Now that you know how New Media Rights can help you, please feel free to fill in our contact form here.
