I have a whole list of ideas for funny t-shirts. Now most of these are just jokes or thoughts I have come up with that are funny, BUT... I also want to have shirts with lines from popular movies or shows. Now these would simply be the quote from the movie/show as a line of text. I see this all the time on sites. http://www.bustedtees.com/shirt/morecowbell/male As you can see, this shirt says "More Cowbell", a line from Saturday Night Live. Now it makes no definite reference to SNL, but everyone knows what the shirt is referring to. Is this allowed? Thanks.
You say allowed but that's a tough nut to crack. Fact is, anyone can sue for anything so I would say as long as no one finds it offensive, you are ok. Problem is that too many people are sensitive to those types of things nowadays.
This is not a matter of offensive comments. It's a matter of putting lines from famous movies and shows on t-shirts. I cant imagine a production company trademarking every line from their movies.
Like you said, movies can't copyright every individual line. You could have a t-shirt that said "Say hello to my little friend" and you'd probably be fine. If you had the same t-shirt with a picture of Al Pacino in Scarface then you'd get sued.
I think if You use somebody copyright, until You are unpopular and Your company is not well known, You will not have any problems. But when You get good trafic and start selling many tshirst - they will find You. The best way is to use free pictures and so on. They are allowed, just search them in google.
I'm sure that you might get into legal trouble, but do you actually think they're going to sue you for a stupid line? I mean, they've got more things to worry about. I'm sure they won't mind. If they do, just simply remove the line from the t-shirt. They don't have a copyright on that line, and it's a line from their skit. I never even though of SNL. Yugo,