Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: copyright

Sayings, quotes and other snippets of speech are generally not eligible for copyright. If the saying is in a unique design, the overall design is protected but not the saying iself. Trademark may be a possibility but if you can't file for your use of the mark in interstate commerce (e.g., sale via the Internet) you may still have certain common law rights.

Re: copyright

You could incorporate your tshirts into your website and copyright the website. And you can copyright each shirt, but you are still going to have the issue Mr. Mark referenced. So you will ultimately have to rely on common law trademark protections until you have sold enough of each shirt to justify trademarking it. Don't forget to include your own signature as the artist that created each shirt on that shirt and put TM on the shirt marking the parts you otherwise would file on.