wildwildwest5
Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? New Mexico
I've been playing with photoshop and altered free free images, as well as some purchased digital sheets. I added some fun sayings I found on the internet, and as far as I can tell, are not trademarked phrases, as I searched; especially something as generic as "bite me," or "change your shoes, change your life." I was having fun with them and posting them on facebook for my friends to enjoy, and to boast about my new photoshop skills. As facebook goes, it spread around. I also found many of my pics on google images.
I received a letter from a lawyer stating this:
"It appears that the images and designs are directly copied from *** designs. In many instances you have replaced the underlying image with a different, yet similar, image. In some cases, you have modified the captions slightly. As you know *** has not licensed its trade dress or any other intellectual property rights to you and we were surprised to see *** designs being used without our client's permission. It is possible you did not realize that using *** intellectual property without such a license may constitute trade dress infringement, copyright infringement, and deceptive practices under federal law."
Now, to be fair, the images I used were similar as far as the era (retro), but they were not this companies copyrighted images. The phrases were not found to be trademarked (I sure hope I was searching correctly!). I am not sure if this is infringement if I use them? Trade dress, I understand that a bit, since I was using retro imagry.
So what I'm wondering, have I committed trade dress infringement, copyright infringement, and deceptive practices?
Much appreciated!
I've been playing with photoshop and altered free free images, as well as some purchased digital sheets. I added some fun sayings I found on the internet, and as far as I can tell, are not trademarked phrases, as I searched; especially something as generic as "bite me," or "change your shoes, change your life." I was having fun with them and posting them on facebook for my friends to enjoy, and to boast about my new photoshop skills. As facebook goes, it spread around. I also found many of my pics on google images.
I received a letter from a lawyer stating this:
"It appears that the images and designs are directly copied from *** designs. In many instances you have replaced the underlying image with a different, yet similar, image. In some cases, you have modified the captions slightly. As you know *** has not licensed its trade dress or any other intellectual property rights to you and we were surprised to see *** designs being used without our client's permission. It is possible you did not realize that using *** intellectual property without such a license may constitute trade dress infringement, copyright infringement, and deceptive practices under federal law."
Now, to be fair, the images I used were similar as far as the era (retro), but they were not this companies copyrighted images. The phrases were not found to be trademarked (I sure hope I was searching correctly!). I am not sure if this is infringement if I use them? Trade dress, I understand that a bit, since I was using retro imagry.
So what I'm wondering, have I committed trade dress infringement, copyright infringement, and deceptive practices?
Much appreciated!