I see a lot of decal sites, for instance decaldriveway.com, and they have trademarked stickers, like dodge, Pirellli, etc. Are you allowed to sell these decals if you put a disclaimer on your website? I've done a lot of research, but I am still unsure.
1. You cannot use logos for a commercial purpose like that without permission. 2. I see on that site they are asking the customer to state "By adding this product to your cart, you state that you have authority to use the logo(s) included in this product. "so it sounds like they do not have the rights either. Have you thought about being an affiliate for them?
So could they get in trouble? What if the sticker is already on something, say a t-shirt, with a bunch of other logos, is this also not allowed? Could you write in your terms of use that your paying for the adding of the logo to the t-shirt, but no the actual logo, making it non-commercial? I'm interested in starting my own website selling decals.
If you don't own the rights to the logo, you cannot use it without permission, you certainly can't use it commercially without permission! It doesn't matter how you word it, its a violation of their copyright and is against the law in most countries. Push ahead with your plans at your own risk.
Ok, let's say you purchase the stickers from an authorized dealer. You add the sticker onto your shirt or item, then you sell the item. Is this still infringement?
i cant see how that would be illegal.. You buy the sticker, then you resell it at a higher price... Thats ebay.
What they sold you was a sticker, what you are selling is a shirt. You're making a new, unauthorized product out of their intellectual property, and that's illegal. If someone purchased a legitimate sticker with the official seal of the President of the United States, and then affixed that sticker to a personal massager and sold it for profit, you can bet they would be prosecuted for copyright infringement. Besides, nobody's going to buy a shirt with a bumper sticker stuck to it, it would come off in the first wash. If you meant purchasing the sticker and then re-translating that image or graphic onto another medium, then you're no longer talking about the item you bought, you're talking about your reproduction of it, which is also illegal. Under absolutely no circumstances are you supposed to be attempting to recreate, reproduce, and especially profit off of somebody else's intellectual property. An artist is getting his arse sued off of him right now for creating a new version of a photo of Obama that was owned by AP, and he even changed it quite a bit before selling it. If you want to follow the law, don't do it at all.