Hey there....looking for advice on registering designs

julesrose8

New Member
Hi all! I have an internet business where I sell decorations which are my own designs. Anyone got an advice on whether I should and how to register the designs at a reasonable cost (even better for free!). Some of the items are sold on Amazon / Ebay etc and I feel a bit concerned about getting copied. Any advice would be appreciated :icon_smile:
 
You own the copyright on them regardless of whether you mention it or not.

You don't specifically need a copyright symbol. But you can put a copyright notice on it for free anyway, just type in "© Copyright 2015. All rights reserved."
 
@Hank

I have always wondered (& slightly worried) about similar issues regarding designers' portfolio, as although it is against the law, what's to stop someone simply copy and pasting (or saving) a portfolio piece and using it? How would you know whether someone has done so, unless you randomly come across it by a hugely unlikely chance. Or even just copying an idea from one of your designs. Many years ago, this same concern stopped me even having an online portfolio in the first place. Is there a clever piece of code that can be implemented to your site which would tell us whether someone has copied / saved a portfolio piece? Or is this just the chance us designers have to take?
 
I've often come across websites that have hard coded their logo into the banners some how, I don't know the technical lingo for it.

But I've always managed to dig into their code and retrieve the link to the logo - I may have needed this for an approved piece and waiting on their logo etc or they couldn't provide it.

There's no way to stop anyone stealing your work when it's online, musicians face this concern on a daily basis, as do movie producers etc. Or anyone that puts any form of art on the internet it's likely to be copied and distributed for free by the non-conformists to society etc. etc. etc.

Basically, if you use an image for a design and then it's found out you didn't have the copyright to it then you're open for a fair law suit.


If you create something, right from the beginning you own the copyright.

You cannot change a design by .00001% or even 99.99999% and claim it as your own - that simply is not accepted by law, there was a thing a while ago going around that said if you change a design by 75% you then owned the copyright, that's simply not true.

This has a good explanation here
Copyright basics for graphic designers – Part 1

Pretty much covers it.
 
there was a thing a while ago going around that said if you change a design by 75% you then owned the copyright, that's simply not true.

How could this ever of been even remotely true? That is ridiculous.

Yeah you've kind of said what I pretty much always assumed. In summery, it is just a chance we as designers have to take when we put our work online. But I was just wondering if there was anyway of keeping track, but I guess apart from being able to see who has clicked on what page, you can never really know much more than that.
 
Hi, I agee with the above. In reality you can't stop designs being copied online. If your pockets were deep enough to fund the legal bods in court, and you won a case, there could be another person or company starting to copy your designs somewhere else. You can't win like that.

You have to ask yourself if your design is really likely to be copied in the first place. If all you are placing in an advert is a photo of the finished product, nobody will have a PDF or any such copy of the actual design to replicate. Trying to copy a three dimensional product would probably not be worth their while unless the product was of very high value.

The other point I would make is from a business point of view, your best defence is to keep your designs fresh. If you stay ahead of the game by selling your latest products online then the best a copier could hope to replicate is last year's stock.

I wouldn't get too bogged down worrying about it. Concentrate on sales and little else.
 
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