Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California
T-shirt design/Intellectual property rights
If one were to create and sell a t-shirt that would attempt to alert the pubic about a certain social cause by stating a fact on it which orginated from a book or website, would one have to get permission to do so?
Example- I create a t-shirt alerting the public about AIDS. (This is just a hypothetical, ignore reaity of figures) The front of the shirt says ''Fight AIDS'', the back states that ''30 million have died already''. And, for example, the ''30 million'' fact was retrieved from a scholarly work, a United Nations website, or a newspaper article. Could I simply cite the author/org. and make the t-shirt? Must I get permission from the author/og. before doing so? Would this information AND when would this type of information be considered in the public domain or public knowledge and thereby bypassing the need for permission? Thanks so much.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: T-shirt design/Intellectual property rights
FACTS are not protected by copyright law. The particular expression of those facts might be... so, state the facts in your own words if possible. You don't need permission to cite facts.. but if you're giving attribution, be sure you're stating things accurately/truthfully, or you could have trouble.
It's a good idea to have multiple sources for your information, so you're sure its accurate.
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