Submission Guidelines

These protect different things, and it helps to keep them apart.

A copyright is a property right in an original work of authorship — literary, musical, artistic, photographic, or film work — fixed in a tangible medium of expression. It gives the holder the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform, and display that work.

A trademark is a word, phrase, logo, or other graphic symbol used by a manufacturer or seller to distinguish its products from everyone else’s.

Fair use is a provision of the U.S. Copyright Act that allows exceptions to a copyright holder’s exclusive rights. The predominant exceptions cover non-commercial speech, social and political commentary, news reporting, and teaching purposes.

Four primary factors determine whether a use is fair:

• The purpose and character of the use, including whether that use is commercial in nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• The nature of the copyrighted work;
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.

Parody is one of the recognised fair use defences. In the eyes of the law, parody applies when a new work calls the original to mind — the original author’s design or trademark — and then criticises or ridicules the message of that original work or trademark.

Parody and satire get treated as the same thing all over the internet. They are not. Satire uses the original as a mere vehicle to criticise something else. The fine line is this: a parody creates more of a new original work that could stand on its own, whereas satire reuses the original without substantial change, and so tends not to fall under the fair use factors above.

That said, parody being capable of qualifying as fair use in certain situations is by no means an absolute rule that every parody qualifies. This is a genuinely complicated area of law and many courts interpret the fair use factors differently. As always, when in doubt, consult an attorney.

Before you submit, ask yourself three questions about your design:

• What is the original work?
• What is the message of that original work — what does it stand for?
• Does my design criticise or ridicule the message of the original work?

If the new work is funny, but funny in a way that makes no commentary on the message of the original, it will probably not be considered a parody. That perceived social commentary or criticism is the key.

Finally, stay conscious of the fact that this is a commercial enterprise. That fact alone will make a copyright or trademark holder — and a reviewing court — put extra scrutiny on a submitted design when applying the fair use factors.

We do not print real people. No celebrity likenesses, ever — and fair use and parody are not exceptions to this rule. This is the one guideline on this page we apply without weighing anything up. If a real, identifiable person is recognisable in your design, we will pass on it, however good the parody argument is.

The reason: all celebrities are afforded statutory protection that gives them a right of publicity, which makes it unlawful to use another person’s likeness for commercial advantage without permission. That is a separate body of law from copyright, and the fair use factors above do not apply to it — so a design can be a perfectly good parody and still be unlawful. Courts have found that even hand-drawn, stylised artwork of famous people sold on T-shirts violates that right. “I drew it myself” is not a defence, and neither is “it’s obviously a joke.”

It applies to the deceased too. Many states protect a person’s likeness for decades after death — seventy years in California, a hundred in Indiana — and those estates are actively enforced.

We are a film and television site, so this comes up constantly. It helps to know that a screen character can carry two separate rights owned by two different parties: the actor owns the right of publicity in their own face, and the studio usually owns the copyright in the character. Avoiding one does not get you clear of the other.

The good news is that the part we care about most is the safest part. Copyright does not protect the cut or shape of a garment, so a jacket, a knit, or a pair of boots drawn as a garment is not somebody’s property. What gets protected is a specific, distinctive character — and the more your drawing identifies one particular character, the more it becomes the studio’s problem to enforce.

Roughly, from riskiest to safest:

• A recognisable actor’s face. Never.
• A specific character drawn recognisably, even without a face.
• A costume rendered as a silhouette that still points to one character.
• The garment itself, drawn generically — or original work that evokes a film’s mood, palette, or era without its characters.
• Wholly original art, or material genuinely in the public domain.

The bottom four are a conversation. The top one is not. If you’re unsure which band you’re in, ask us before you spend time on the finished file.

Legally, political figures are treated differently. Many of them enjoy celebrity status — and notoriety, for that matter — but commentary on public officials gets far more room than commentary on entertainers, and in law they are largely fair game.

We still don’t print them. Our no-real-people rule is a house rule, not just a legal one, and CinemaShirts is a film and television shop — politics isn’t what we’re here for. The legal distinction is worth knowing; it just isn’t an opening.