Print on Demand Trademark Rules: What Not to Put on a Shirt

The Shirt That Can Close Your Shop

Most print on demand shops don’t fail because nobody buys. They fail because of one design that never should have gone up: a team name, a cartoon character, a band logo, or a catchy phrase that turned out to belong to someone else. A complaint comes in, the listing disappears, and after a few of those, the whole shop can go with it. In the worst cases, a brand sues hundreds of sellers at once and freezes their accounts before they even know there’s a lawsuit.

None of this means you need a lawyer to sell a shirt. It means you need a few rules and a habit of checking before you list. Here’s how trademark and copyright actually work for print on demand sellers, what the common myths get wrong, and what to do if a complaint lands in your inbox.

Short version: Trademarks protect brand names, logos, and some phrases used to sell products like clothing. Copyright protects artwork, characters, photos, and fonts. Before every design, search the words in the free USPTO trademark search, skip anything tied to a team, brand, character, or celebrity, and use only graphics and fonts licensed for commercial use. “Parody,” “fan art,” and “I changed it 30%” don’t protect you. Repeat complaints can get an Etsy shop closed for good, and some brands file mass lawsuits that freeze sellers’ money. If a complaint comes in, take the listing down, don’t relist it, and keep records.

Trademark and Copyright Are Two Different Problems

People use the words loosely, but they protect different things, and a design can break either one, or both.

	Trademark	Copyright
What it protects	Names, logos, slogans, and phrases that identify who sells a product	Original creative work: artwork, illustrations, characters, photos, writing, fonts as software
Shirt examples	A team name, a brand’s logo, a trademarked phrase	A cartoon character, a movie still, someone’s illustration, a photo from Google
How you get it	By using a mark in business; registering adds stronger rights	Automatically, the moment the work is created
How long it lasts	As long as it’s used and renewed	Decades; works from 1930 entered the US public domain in 2026
Etsy counter notice?	No	Yes, for US copyright reports

How Trademarks Trip Up Shirt Sellers

Names and logos are the obvious ones. Sports teams, colleges, car brands, beer brands, bands, video games, and TV shows all police their marks, and clothing is one of their biggest licensing businesses. “Unofficial” or “inspired by” in your listing doesn’t change anything. Neither does a hometown pride design built around a team’s colors and name.

Phrases are the sneaky ones. A saying you’ve heard a hundred times can be registered as a trademark for clothing. The best-known example is “Taco Tuesday.” Taco John’s held a trademark on it in 49 states from 1989 until it gave the registration up in July 2023, after Taco Bell challenged it. Sellers also file trademarks on phrases that are already trending, then send complaints to everyone else selling shirts with them.

The good news: a lot of common phrases can’t be trademarked for shirts at all. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) often refuses to register widely used slogans and messages on the front of a shirt, because buyers see them as decoration or a message, not as a brand. That’s why a search sometimes turns up a dead, refused application for the exact phrase you wanted. But “often refused” isn’t “always refused,” and a live registration is a real risk. You have to check every time.

How to Run a Trademark Search in 10 Minutes

The USPTO’s free database replaced the old TESS system in November 2023. Here’s the routine we’d follow for every design:

1. Go to tmsearch.uspto.gov and search the main phrase, then the key words on their own.
2. Look at the status. “Live” marks are the ones that matter. “Dead” means abandoned, canceled, or refused.
3. Check the goods. Clothing falls in International Class 25. A live mark covering shirts, hats, or “apparel” is a stop sign. A live mark for an unrelated product, like software, is usually less of a concern, but famous brands are protected well beyond their own products.
4. Search Etsy, Amazon, and Google for the phrase too. Trademark rights can come from use alone, without registration, and a brand that sells the phrase may still complain.
5. Write down the date and what you found. The Design Log tab in our print on demand workbook has a column for it.

If something comes up live for clothing, drop the design or change the wording until it’s clearly yours. One design isn’t worth the shop.

Copyright: Art, Characters, Fonts, and Photos

Copyright is automatic. Every illustration, photo, and character is protected the moment it’s created, whether or not it carries a copyright notice. For shirt sellers, the trouble usually comes from four places:

• Characters and fan art. Drawing a famous character yourself, in your own style, is still copying the character. Fan art is welcome in many fan communities, but selling it is a different matter, and character owners are some of the most active enforcers.
• Images found online. A picture on Google, Pinterest, or someone’s Instagram belongs to whoever made it. “No copyright intended” in your listing doesn’t change that.
• Fonts. Many “free” fonts are free for personal use only. Selling shirts with them needs a commercial license. Check the license file that came with the font, or buy from a site that includes commercial use.
• Design bundles and clip art. Bought graphics come with license terms. Some allow print on demand, some limit how many items you can sell, and some don’t allow it at all. Etsy’s own rules also require your designs to be your original work, so a lightly edited template can get a listing pulled even if the license allows it.

The Myths That Get Sellers in Trouble

“If I change it 30%, it’s legal.” There’s no percentage rule in US copyright or trademark law. The question is whether the result is substantially similar to the original, or likely to confuse buyers about who made it. A recolored or slightly redrawn logo still fails that test.

“It’s parody, so it’s protected.” Parody can be a legal defense, but it’s narrow, it’s decided case by case, and it’s argued in court, usually after you’ve been sued. A platform won’t weigh your parody argument before removing a listing. For a small seller, “it might win in court” isn’t protection.

“Everyone else is selling it.” That usually means everyone else hasn’t been caught yet. Brands often enforce in waves, and the sellers with the most listings and sales get noticed first, which is exactly where a growing shop ends up.

“I’m too small to bother with.” Mass lawsuits, covered below, are built to go after hundreds of small sellers at once. Being small doesn’t help.

Public Domain: What’s Actually Free to Use

Copyright doesn’t last forever. On January 1, 2026, works from 1930 entered the US public domain, including Betty Boop’s earliest cartoons, Pluto, the first Nancy Drew books, and the original “Blondie” comic strip. Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, entered the public domain in 2024.

There’s a catch that trips up shirt sellers: trademarks don’t expire with copyright. The Betty Boop trademark is still active, and Disney still holds trademarks on Mickey Mouse. You can use the public domain version of the work itself, but putting the character on merchandise in a way that suggests it comes from the trademark owner is still risky. Old artwork, vintage illustrations, and classic paintings are safer ground, as long as you work from the original and not a modern restored version someone else owns.

AI Designs: Two Extra Risks

AI can copy without telling you. Image generators sometimes produce something very close to an existing character, logo, or artist’s style. If you sell it, the infringement is yours, not the tool’s. Check AI designs exactly as carefully as anything else, and run the trademark search on any words in them. Etsy also requires you to disclose AI use in the listing description.

You may not own what the AI made. In March 2025, a federal appeals court confirmed that a work created entirely by AI can’t be copyrighted, because copyright requires a human author. The US Copyright Office takes the position that typing prompts alone isn’t enough human control. In practice, that means a purely AI-generated design may be free for anyone to copy, including your competitors. The more of the design you create or substantially change yourself, the stronger your claim to it.

What Happens When You Get a Complaint

On Etsy, a rights owner files a report, Etsy removes the listing, and Etsy tries to contact you with the details. What you can do next depends on the type of complaint:

• Copyright reports (US): you can file a counter notice if you believe the report is wrong, for example because the artwork is entirely your own. Etsy sends it to the person who complained, and the listing can be restored after 10 business days unless they file a lawsuit. Only file one if you’re confident. It’s a legal statement made under penalty of perjury.
• Trademark reports: Etsy doesn’t offer a counter notice. Only the person who filed can withdraw the report, and even a withdrawal doesn’t guarantee your shop’s status goes back to normal.

The part that matters most: Etsy’s policy lets it close shops that receive repeat or multiple notices, and it may refuse to let you open a new shop if it believes you’re the same person. Amazon Merch on Demand, Redbubble, and TeePublic all have their own versions of the same rules.

What we’d do after a complaint:

1. Don’t relist the design, and don’t argue in public about it.
2. Search your own shop for similar designs using the same name, character, or phrase, and take those down too before they draw the next complaint.
3. Save the complaint, the listing, and your sales records for that design.
4. If you’re sure the design is original and the report is wrong, consider a counter notice for copyright, or talk to an intellectual property attorney before responding to anything that mentions money.

The Bigger Threat: Mass “Schedule A” Lawsuits

Some brands skip the platform complaint and go straight to federal court. In a “Schedule A” case, a rights owner sues hundreds of online sellers at once, lists them on a sealed attachment called Schedule A, and asks a judge for an emergency order before the sellers are notified. Marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon and payment processors like PayPal and Stripe then freeze the sellers’ accounts and money. Many sellers only find out when their balance is locked.

The demands can be large. Trademark law allows statutory damages of $1,000 to $200,000 per mark per type of goods for counterfeiting, and up to $2 million if it’s willful. Many of these cases end with sellers who never responded losing by default.

Courts have started pushing back. In 2025 and 2026, several federal judges questioned the whole Schedule A approach, narrowed account freezes, and awarded the $1,000 minimum where plaintiffs asked for far more. But many cases still go through, and plaintiffs keep filing.

If your account is frozen and you don’t know why: check whether you’ve been named in a federal lawsuit, don’t ignore it, keep records showing when you removed the listing and how few sales it had, and talk to an attorney who handles these cases quickly. Settlements that release frozen funds are often possible, and courts have reduced freezes to the money tied to the accused product. An LLC won’t stop a lawsuit like this, but it does keep business debts and judgments separate from your personal assets. Choosing a business structure covers when that’s worth setting up.

Protecting Your Own Designs

Once your designs sell, other people will copy them. Your options:

• You already own the copyright in artwork you created yourself. You can report copies on Etsy, Amazon, Redbubble, and other platforms through their IP reporting forms.
• Registering a copyright with the US Copyright Office costs $45 for a single work by one author, or $65 with the standard application. For US works, you generally need a registration before you can sue, and registering early makes stronger damages available.
• Registering a trademark for your shop’s brand name costs $350 per class of goods in USPTO filing fees, more if your description of goods doesn’t match the USPTO’s standard list. It protects your brand name, not the slogans on your shirts. Most small shops don’t need one until the brand itself has value.

The Pre-Listing Checklist

Run every design through this before it goes live:

1. No team, school, brand, band, game, movie, show, or celebrity names, logos, or likenesses.
2. No characters you didn’t create, including fan art and redrawn versions.
3. Every phrase searched on tmsearch.uspto.gov, with no live clothing registration.
4. Phrase also searched on Etsy, Amazon, and Google for brands already using it.
5. Fonts and graphics licensed for commercial use, with the license saved.
6. AI designs checked for look-alikes, and AI use disclosed in the Etsy listing.
7. The date and result recorded in your design log.

Original Beats Clever Every Time

The designs that get shops in trouble are usually the easy ones: borrowing something people already love and putting it on a shirt. The designs that build a business are the ones only you could have made, from your trade, your town, or your own sense of humor. They’re harder to come up with, but nobody can take them down, and nobody can copy your eye for what your niche actually wants. That’s what the whole print on demand business blueprint is built around.

Related Guides

• Print on demand business blueprint: the full step-by-step plan.
• How to make money on Etsy: fees, rules, and what sellers earn.
• How to make money with print on demand: the platforms compared.
• How to sell digital products: the same rules apply to digital files.

This article is for general informational purposes only and isn’t financial, legal, insurance, or tax advice. For guidance specific to your situation, talk to a licensed professional.

Sources

• Etsy, Intellectual Property Policy: https://www.etsy.com/legal/ip/
• Etsy, Creativity Standards: https://www.etsy.com/legal/creativity/
• USPTO, Retiring TESS and the new Trademark Search: https://www.uspto.gov/subscription-center/2023/retiring-tess-what-know-about-new-trademark-search-system
• Fish & Richardson, New USPTO trademark fees (January 18, 2025): https://www.fr.com/insights/thought-leadership/blogs/new-uspto-trademark-fees-go-into-effect-january-18-2025/
• US Copyright Office, Fees: https://www.copyright.gov/about/fees.html
• Dorsey, Taco Tuesday and failure to function on merchandise: https://www.dorsey.com/insights/taco-tuesday-for-everyone-but-not-to-register-as-a-trademark
• Axios, Taco John’s abandons Taco Tuesday trademark (July 18, 2023): https://www.axios.com/2023/07/18/taco-tuesday-trademark-taco-johns-taco-bell
• Traverse Legal, A seller’s guide to Schedule A cases (July 2026): https://www.traverselegal.com/blog/your-amazon-or-paypal-account-was-frozen-by-a-trademark-lawsuit-a-sellers-guide-to-schedule-a-cases/
• Goodwin, D.C. Circuit holds AI cannot be an author (March 2025): https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/03/alerts-technology-dc-circuit-holds-that-ai-cannot-be-an-author
• ABC7, Betty Boop and Blondie enter the public domain in 2026: https://abc7chicago.com/amp/post/betty-boop-blondie-enter-public-domain-2026-accompanied-trio-detectives/18341635/