Hello, I'm a little new to Cafepress, and I've half done this as a bit of fun to see how it works since I had a (I thought good) idea for t-shirts.

My shop is at http://www.cafepress.com/houseofepicgeek

My question is that I've stumbled across MOD EDIT: Removing URL per forum guidelines. Check your PM's for further explanation.

Which appears to be MY product, at my price, with my description. What's going on? Firstly I thought someone had ripped off my design, but now I see it's linked to Cafepress. But there's no mention of my store on that website.

My questions are really related to how Cafepress.com markets/uses/allows my designs to be used.

I'm assuming this website is, well a reseller of Cafepress.com content?

Can someone explain to be how use of my products works on external websites? I'd assumed it was just on the main website, but now I see this. I've been scouring the Help content and still remain unclear as to what the deal is. Cheers for any advice!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RowdyJRT,

Yes- that is another site promoting your shirt. It's called 'affiliate marketing' - if that site gets someone to buy something CafePress pays them a portion of the sale. We used to pay part of that, but we don't any more.

The CP Affiliate Program is run through another company (Commission Junction) and there is an off-site forum dedicated to Affiliate Marketing- the name escapes me at the moment but I'm sure someone will be along soon.

Affiliate marketing, I see, I'd missed that part of the pages on here. It makes sense in that case. Off to do some more reading I think - feeling a bit sheepish at my first response when i saw that site ("how dare they! i worked for ages on that design!!"), hehe.

Thanks for the input!

One thing you should know is that using warcraft and "might of kings" are infringing on the intellectual property rights of Blizzard. You can get fined an enormous amount of money and it breaches CP's content usage policy (CUP).

From wikipedia:
Intellectual property (IP) are legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law.[1] Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets.

billisaur, you've raised an interesting topic actually because I did think twice about this before I posted the stuff. However, there are a few things which I believe weigh on the side of "it's acceptable" - namely that I haven't used the trademarked names of Blizzard, Warcraft, WoW/etc anywhere on the t-shirt, and also the individual words that you're referring to (Might or Kings - not a phrase) are not sufficiently specific enough/trademarked by the company themselves. Another thing that boosted my confidence is to see the sheer proliferation of WOW-related tshirts already available, most of which make much MUCH more explicit reference to materials in the game. There is an abundance of examples if you do a search for the term "wow" on CP. E.g. Alliance/Horde, referring to item quality (there are many examples of explicit copying of the in-game graphics such as tooltips or NPC quest icons), as well as direct phrases from Blizzard-related stuff (phrase: "Sword of a thousand truths", "For the horde", "Death Knight pride").

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that my tshirts are so generalised as to be not in violation of the terms of service in any way, and pointing a finger at others who've done it far more explicitly (if they can be considered to cross the line I don't know).

But I don't know for sure that this is ok. I believe yes for the reasons given - but then I just started here and perhaps I'm being naive!

I can't figure out how to edit my post, gah, but I've spotted other examples of what I'm talking about just now - references to in-game locations (Booty Bay) and races (Tauren Druids, etc) on merchendise which surely is definitely more of an infringement than my "might" and "kings" reference (which I stress again isn't a phrase as you put it, I could see how it would be if that were the case)? Would be interesting to further thoughts on this as breaking TOS is not something I'm interested in

HOEG, there used to be a thread stickied at the top of the Content Usage Policy forum but it got eaten by the forum somehow.

Basically it laid out the whole "I see stuff that I got red-boxed for on CP!'

Here are the possibilities.

1) It's infringing. Report it to cup@cafepress.com. With all that is uploaded, CP can't catch everything even with some filters they seem to have in place.

2) It's allowed because of some slight difference than what yours was red-boxed for. (red box is what they put around a design in your image basket when it's been put on hold due to CUP)

3) It's allowed because that shop has permission to use it. They may have a licensing agreement that they've shown to CP. They don't have to show it to anyone else or say anything about them having a license.

Hope that helps.

Just be careful because I certainly wouldn't want to try to convince Blizzard's lawyers that "might of kings" had no relation to their intellectual property! My very first few designs were even less explicitly related to warcraft than yours but I pulled them very quickly when I learned that I could get charged an obscene amount of money without even being warned.. it was too risky... for me anyway!

"Do while ditty..." lol That's some funny stuff there.

Okay, here's my take on your "Salvation" design. It's religious satire based upon references that have entered the popular lexicon. Much like "Do not pass 'Go,' go directly to jail." You use two words which are also used in WoW, but both of which existed for centuries prior to that game existing. The reference is oblique, and will only be recognized by people familiar with the game. I would consider it "protected speech" and plow right ahead with it.

I am not an attorney nor a paid attorney spokesperson, nor do I play one on TV or the "Internets." This is not legal advice, it is my curmudgeonly opinion.

I totally understand your concern, as someone who just did this because I thought it was a funny joke (and I couldn't find a shirt for love nor money that had this phrase, nevermind a design I liked!), I'm REALLY not out to annoy Blizzard I'm off to find out how to contact them about this matter today for clarification.

p.s. just to reiterate "might of kings" isn't a phrase I've heard used in Warcraft, nor is it one used in my designs, it's just the words "might" and "kings" seperately, as individual words. when i read your 2nd reply i got all paranoid doubting myself that I'd made a typo hehe.

And thank you Teesed, I couldn't find that sticky in the forum you mention but there's enough general info to be of use in there anyway, looks good.

It does not matter if it has existed prior to warcraft's existence.. phrases used ingame are their intellectual property

quote:

Originally posted by billisaur:
Just be careful because I certainly wouldn't want to try to convince Blizzard's lawyers that "might of kings" had no relation to their intellectual property!

Bill, "Might of Kings" might be a specific enough phrase to cause problems, but that isn't what HOEG has on his(?) design. I read it as "Give us 'Might' or 'Kings' instead," single quotes added by me; 'Might' and 'Kings' being special powers or attributes found in WoW -- but not necessarily.

Yes, they are Blessings (as in Blessing of Might or Blessing of Kings to use their actual spell name in the game: http://www.wowwiki.com/Blessing_of_Might for e.g.)

(ETA: or Blessing of Salvation, hence the pun)

rofl

forgive me im using my notebook computer.. I'd still think it was risky though since the implication is there... if there's even a remote reason to sue someone lol

good luck with sales though, hopefully they'll leave you alone!

I'm going to move this whole thing to the CUP forum, but be very very clear about one thing. None of our opinions on what is and is not allowed matters one bit in a situation like this. There are people on this forum who didn't get a "cease and desist" warning letter - they got a lawsuit for a big chunk of change. For two words that exist separately and together as a distinct phrase before a company trademarked it for use on clothing.

If you want to skirt the law and take a chance, know you're getting into very very rough seas.