Embroidery Copyright and Trademarks: Protecting Your Business from Legal Disaster

The Hidden Risks of an Illegal Business

What if I told you right now, today, you might be running an illegal business and you've got no idea. Not because you meant to, but because nobody told you the rules.

Hey, I'm Hope Yoder. This is the Embroidery Profit Podcast. This episode could save your business.

Defining Copyright and Trademark in Embroidery

What is copyright and trademark? Copyright is someone who made something and only they get to make money from it.

Now, a trademark protects a name, a word, a mark, a logo, or a phrase that belongs to the brand, and nobody else can use it to sell things. Now, the key rule I want you to know here is it doesn't matter if you redraw it, you change it by 20%.

You change the colors or add to it. If you embroider something that belongs to someone else and sell it, you are breaking the law.

The Hard Truth About Stealing Designs

Now, this is a point of contention for a lot of people. And I want to tell you, I don't know if I've mentioned this on a previous podcast, but in the past, for the past 20 to 30 years, I've been a fabric designer. So I worked under a design label.

And they sold my fabrics in quilt shops across America. And also, I sold machine embroidery design collections and in independent mom and pop shops across the country.

So if you went into a shop that sold embroidery machines or a quilt shop, you probably either saw my fabric and didn't know it was me or my embroidery designs. And one of the things I saw early on years ago, when Facebook got started, is people were stealing designs, meaning they purchased them.

One person purchased embroidery designs, and then they were sharing them with everyone else, and the other people didn't pay for them. And if you were a designer like me, this really is stealing. It hurts your income.

It takes money away from your family. So a lot of times people don't think about it that way. But let's go with the obvious ones. All right, copyright.

The High Price of Infringing on Major Brands

Let's take Disney. Every character, every movie, every property, they have a team whose only job in the world is to find people using their stuff without permission. Now, you guys, Disney has deep pockets.

They have people that are scouring Etsy, the web, everywhere to look for something that's not legal. Now, here's a real story. In Kisseme, Florida, there was a couple selling fake Mickey Mouse ears in Facebook groups.

Disney sent two cease and desist letters, and this couple kept doing it. Disney took them to court. And in March of 2024, the court ordered them to shut down all online stores.

Now, you might be thinking right now, but I see this on Etsy all the time. Just because you see it, it means they haven't been caught yet. And more importantly, it's really a moral issue.

You guys, God is always watching, right? You've heard that story about the apples. Well, I won't go into that, but just because people are doing it doesn't mean it's right.

Protected Entities: From Sports to Luxury Brands

I want you guys to set yourself up for success doing things the right way. Now you know Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, all Disney and all protected. Let's move into another thing that I see a lot: sports teams.

The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, colleges, military branches, those are all protected. That means you cannot use any of their logos and anything that you embroider, laser, engrave, or print.

And again, just because you see people doing it doesn't mean it's legal. Another very obvious thing for brands would be Nike, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Coach. You cannot embroider their logo on something and sell it.

They have people scouring the web to find people to take down for breaking the law. Now, let me tell you a story. Maybe in a previous podcast, you've heard me mention that I was kind of a hired gun for different companies like Brother, Baby Lock, Bernina, Viking Foth, Ginome, etc.

The Brother Disney License: A Common Misconception

Working with Brother was really eye opening. Brother Home Embroidery Machines and their multi needle machines have Disney designs. And those designs you can only find if you purchase an original Brother Embroidery Machine.

Fun fact: Brother actually makes a lot of the machines that are sold from Babylon. And Babylon does not have brother designs on them, only Brother does. Now, here's what you don't know: Brother pays a ton of money for licensing to Disney.

All right. They have an exclusive agreement at the time of this podcast. And so you'll find beautiful Disney designs on Brother Machines.

But that doesn't mean that you can sell those designs. Those are for personal use only. Brother is the only embroidery machine company that I know with Disney designs built into the machine.

I'm pretty sure they pay millions every year for that licensing. I don't really know. I'm just guessing. But I do know for a fact that they have a license agreement.

But those built-in designs, again, those are for personal use. So if you're watching this and you have a brother machine like I do, just know you can't stitch them and sell them. That's actually illegal.

Even though you paid for your machine, the designs came with it. I hear people saying, but it came with it. I can do it. No, you can't. I wanna make sure you guys don't get in trouble.

The Hidden Trap of Licensed Fabric

Now let's move on to some not so obvious copyright infringements. Let's talk about sports team on fabric. Now I don't know if there's any Joann's fabrics around anymore, but in my day, we used to always go to Joanne's store and they had a section that had a license sports team, your favorite football NFL teams.

If you looked on the side of the fabric, the salvage—that's the side of the fabric—there would be printed little circles, and it would always say, this is copyrighted. And a lot of people don't read that salvage.

What that means is it's trademark for personal use only, not for resale. It's kind of strange to me that you could buy the fabric and you could make something for a friend or a family, but you can't sell it. All right.

Now, also, here's an interesting fact. If you make something with, let's say, that trademarked fabric and you donate it to an organization, you give it for free, and that organization turns around and sells it to raise money, that is not cool.

That's infringing on copyright. Just because you gave it away and then they sold it, that makes that not cool. All right. So just beware of that.

Real-World Consequences: Confiscated Cash and Equipment

Buying it gives you permission to use it at home, not to donate it to someone who's gonna sell it and not to sell it yourself. So here's a true story, a real consequence. When I'm doing this episode, sometimes I'll do research online and I found this story that was really sad, but I want to bring home that what I'm saying is true.

All right, a real consequence at Michigan State Craft Fair campus, a police walks around the floor, he's actually looking for proof of licensing. They confiscate items and the cash and your cash box and all of it. So you can just kind of Google that and check that out.

I know for a fact I've done hundreds of craft shows and vendor malls in my years being in this industry. And the people that pay for licensing, all right, they have to display that they are licensed to sell things with that.

A lot of times that could be a sports team or a university. So you're wondering, well, how can I sell things with that on it? You can if you go through the proper channels legally and you get a formal licensing agreement with whatever company that is, and you display that on your website and in person when you sell it.

Now, some of the big companies, they're obviously not going to give smaller people like myself licensing agreement. But I have a friend who does all of the college campuses in her area and she has licensing agreements that she has to renew every year.

You can also get some of the military agreements. And you can do your research, go into AI, or just Google how to get those licensing. So again, I want to bring you back to Etsy.

You guys, if you have an Etsy shop and you're selling items, finished items, please protect yourself. And just because other people are doing it, just refrain from that. Come up with some really cute, unique, original ideas that don't even look like anything that's copyright.

And if you do purchase designs, make sure they don't look like copyright. Right now, what's going on is at the time of me recording this podcast, a few days ago, Dolly Parton passed away. And I see Dolly Parton likenesses everywhere.

People are embroidering designs, they're printing DTF transfers. And I have to admit, I thought about that for a second. But you know what? Dolly Parton was an amazing person.

She left a legacy just thinking about it. I grew up listening to her music. My dad had LPs and records, and then we had eight-track tapes, if that tells you how old I am.

Dolly Parton was one of their favorites. And so I grew up on her music. And then I remember I went to Dollywood. The first time I went there, you guys, I actually cried because it was so meaningful to me to hear her story and to know how many people she helped with the money that she made.

Truly a good person. But that doesn't give me rights to make anything and sell it with her likeness or her name on it. That's only up to Dolly and her foundation to do that.

At the end of the day, I want you guys to sleep good knowing that your business is clean and that you're not profiting off of someone else or some trademark that could shut down your business.

How to Handle Copyrighted Requests from Clients

Now I want to tell you a true story about me and my business. I get asked a lot of time to do copyright things. And I really don't want to offend my client, but at the same time, I have hard, fast rules.

Pretty much that's a no-how, no way, no likeness. But how do you educate your client and talk to them so they're not embarrassed because they didn't know? All right.

So here's a true story. A client filled out one of my custom order forms on my website about Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2026. And they wanted me to actually embroider Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2026 on several mock crew neck sweatshirts because their family was gonna go and actually watch the parade.

And you guys, I get that. That's huge. Macy's Thanksgiving parade is a legacy. It's an icon here in America, and you've probably watched at least one of those.

I admit it'd be so cool to be standing there showing your embroidery with your family all standing there. But I knew that wasn't legal. So the first thing that I did is I looked it up.

Is Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade trademarked? And you know what? Since 1998, it is not the logo, but the words. So that means that I can't take any jobs that have any likeness to the word Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

It would be unprofessional of me to do that. So the first thing that you probably want to ask is, are these for personal uses like a family trip? Now I knew I was not going to do what they asked me, but my job is to find a workaround.

I'm a problem solver in my business. So I know that this meant a lot to them to have something to remember them going in person to the Macy's Parade. So my question is, are these for personal use like for a family trip?

Are you part of an official Macy's Day parade group with authorization? Do you have license from Macy to use this phrase? And of course, their answer is going to be yes to number one, it is for a personal trip. And no, they don't have any of the license agreement.

So the next conversation, I offered some safe alternatives. So here by me using Chat GPT or Claude and going online, here are some safe solutions that I could do for them that protected me from infringing on copyright.

Are you ready for it? Thanksgiving Parade 2026. Or NYC Thanksgiving Trip. Or New York Thanksgiving Adventure. Or Gobble Till You Wobble, New York City 2026.

Now they didn't like any of these because they really wanted that phrase. And I'm quite sure they probably found somebody to do it for them. But me saying no always ends with a way to say yes.

In this case, I lost the job and I'm 100% okay with that. Because my family and I live off the income that we make. And so if I was gonna get shut down, this would really change everything about how we pay our bills and it could change that for you too.

The "Let Them" Example: How to Research Trademarks

Let's talk about Facebook groups and the Etsy trap. I've kind of mentioned Etsy before, but copyright infringement posted in embroidery groups every single day. You guys, I see it.

Disney, sports logos, brand names, people are just hijacking and knocking this off. And I see it everywhere. But recently there was a huge, massive bunch of Facebook groups that got shut down.

And if you happen to own one of those groups, that would be really tragic if you were using those as a way to train people or a way to sell your products because you probably didn't have an email address for all of the people in the group.

In my group, I'm really intentional. One of the questions when you join either my laser engraving group or my embroidery lounge is that you're not allowed to be mean and you're not allowed to post anything that resembles copyright infringements.

The moment I see it, I take that post down. I've only had to do that a few times. But I'll always follow up with a gentle reminder to whatever post I took down.

I'll message them and say, hey, I want to remind you that that design is copyrighted and I don't want you or my group to get in trouble. So we deleted it. I love what you did, but please be very careful and do not sell this design.

I don't want anybody else to be shut down any more than I want you to be. So I hope you're taking this to heart. Now, if you're listening, you're probably wondering: well, how do I tell if something is copyrighted?

I know I have. And there's a website I can give you so you can actually post or search. All right, it's in a free official government website tool. And here's the web address.

TM Search, like trademark search. So tmsearch.uspto.gov. I'm going to say that again. Tmsearch.uspto.gov. And we'll have that in the show notes.

So you can type a phrase, a word in that search, and you can see if it's a registered trademark. Now not everything is protected will show up there. If something is famous and widely known, your best bet is to assume it's protected and stay away from it.

If you're in doubt, just don't do it. One order is never worth losing your whole business. Now, I'll give you a personal real-world example.

You probably heard Mel Robbins. She had a book and a theory called Let Them. I started listening to the audiobook. It was kind of good, but it really wasn't for me.

But everybody was going crazy off the phrase let them. So on my website, I sell an embroidered crew neck that's puff foam that just says let them and it's tone-on tone. And it's a pretty cool design.

We've sold a lot of them. But before I sold them and I put it on my website, I did my research and let them. Mel Robbins tried to get it copyrighted, but it's been around, I believe, if I remember right, since the early 1900s.

It was not available for copyright. It was public domain. And so in that case, I was free to go ahead and do that. But if I didn't do my research, I probably would have stayed away from it.

What is Actually Safe to Embroider?

Let's talk about what is safe to embroider. If you're a shop like mine, you're embroidering a client's logo. And yes, that's what commercial embroidery is for.

Original artwork created from scratch. Yes, you can embroider that. And usually the business owner or the marketing team is gonna send you their logo and you're able to digitize that.

But designs purchase with a commercial license, meaning you've gone through all the legal channels, you've obtained a license that you pay for. You'll read what that license says. And I'm assuming, depending on who you are listening to this, it involves embroidery.

So that would be protected as long as the license agreement says that. Now, public domain artwork. Sometimes you can embroider this, but you've got to be careful.

Old artwork can be public domain while a newer version still could be protected. In that case, honestly, I'm just not gonna do it.

Your Final Compliance Checklist

All right, as a quick recap, let me give you a quick checklist. Disney, Marvel, Sports Team, Military, Colleges famous brand. Nope, not for sale without a license.

Brother Disney built-in designs, personal use only, you cannot sell them. Etsy designs marked personal use only. Do not sell them, and I probably wouldn't even buy them either.

If you're not sure, check the website tmsearch.uspto.gov first. If you're still not sure, don't do it. A client who's asking for something that you can't do, educate them kindly, offer an alternative, and keep that relationship.

I'd rather you turn down one order and sleep well than take one order and lose everything that you've built. Hey guys, share this with someone in your crafting community who needs to hear it. It could be the difference between them losing their business and thriving.

I'm Hope Yoder. This is the Embroidery Profit Podcast. And I'll see you next time.